Notes on Kaka

In 2014, GB Sampedro released S6parados (yes, that is the title), an anthology of relationship stories that, to be honest, wasn't all that great. I reviewed that film way back in Cinemalaya 2014, and in retrospect I think I was too kind on that movie - it certainly hasn't aged well in the intervening years.

That was the film I immediately remembered when seeing his latest venture: a sex comedy called Kaka. Overall, I think my feelings towards both films are the same: cliched and formulaic, occasionally entertaining, raunchy but paradoxically watered down, and not the worst thing in the world, but very, very far from the best.

Kaka (Sunshine Guimary) works as a radio DJ with a sex advice show, but there's one thing that's bugged her for the longest time: despite her best efforts, she cannot orgasm. However, when she meets a mysterious man at a party and has sex with him, she manages to climb the peak of pleasure. That event, and her search for the man behind the mystery, becomes a source of conflict between her, her family, and her longtime friend Jorge (Jerald Napoles.)

Kaka is most entertaining when it's more comedy than sex; unfortunately the film tends to concentrate more on the latter rather than the former. Guimary, who gained fame due to her YouTube and Instagram presence, shows off her assets here (wink wink) even though she doesn't need to and in all honesty she's actually not that bad an actress (at least compared to other, less talented members of the cast, especially Ion Perez, who has the acting range of a brutalist building from the 1970s.) The script is full of innuendos that no sane woman would realistically say, and would probably only be funny to your tito who effortlessly manages to ruin Christmas dinner year after year with his off color stories. Jerald Napoles carries most of the film, though he doesn't show up as much he probably should.

The film offers a contrast between a sexually open lifestyle and conservative, traditional Filipino family values, which could have lead to interesting things, but it transforms into this strange empowerment narrative and it's all too little, too late.

Why is Viva trying to revive sexy comedies like Kaka? Considering the fact that as of this writing, it's the most watched film on Vivamax, I think they're up to something. It also makes me think a lot about audience tastes and that notion keeps me up at night.

Notes on General Admission

 

Filipinos are storytellers, and thus, love a good story. Stories rouse the imagination, create histories, keep us informed and inspire us. But like all things, stories have dark sides too. Paired with the truth, stories can do all the things mentioned above and more. Without the truth as a partner, stories become gossip, creating their own false truths as they go. Unfortunately, we have made an industry of it, and the tragedies that spring from this commercialization of half truths is the main focus of Jeffrey Hidalgo's General Admission.

Katja (Jasmine Curtis-Smith) suffers an "accident" on live TV. The showbiz press reports on the issue, which soon spirals out of control. Layers upon layers of new details mutate and distort the original story until it leads to something unexpected.

The look and feel of the film evokes theatre, exaggeration, artificiality. It works as a component of the film's satirical nature, but it also evokes the atmosphere of a circus, and that's exactly what this film feels like. As the stories grow more and more ridiculous, the pundits that spread these stories strip them of nuance, guiding (or rather, forcing) their own narratives. We want catharsis, but these pundits get out of the situation relatively unscathed. Yes, I can hear some say, don't shoot the messenger, but when the messenger begins making up their own stories, you eventually kind of have to.

And what of the people at the center of these stories? Therein lies perhaps the film's biggest weakness: it doesn't quite dwell on the consequences of these narratives on the people it affects, instead preferring to dwell on the spectacle itself. A major factor in the film's climax is a story all on its own, yet it is used as a "gotcha" moment, and we are given little time to ruminate on it. To be fair, it can also work in a meta sense - in that we easily dismissed this plot point earlier in the story as true or plausible, making us no different from the audiences in the film.

One can also fault the film for not incorporating social media as it is today, a cancerous growth that has only grown exponentially in the past five years - the film, in that respect, feels dated. But the central tenet of General Admission points to a larger malaise in our society that I feel is universal even today. I'm referring to how these stories oversaturate our senses, overwhelming us with trivialities and sensationalized falsehoods, to the point where such superficial appeasements keep us placated while people in power take advantage of our stupor. We drown in bread and circuses and all the world's a joke - it's just that the joke is ultimately on us.