I've said more than enough about Angpangabagat Nin Talakba Ha Likol and City of Flowers, both entries from QCinema 2021, both good in their own way, both well worth watching, both strong entries even in this new slate of films. I will note that these two films (especially, in my opinion, City of Flowers) shine the most on the big screen.
Claudia Fernando's Roundtrip to Happiness shows two kids travelling the world in a time when international travel isn't exactly open, especially to those without the privilege and means to do so. The film is shot primarily through Google Earth (which makes me wonder whether the footage is subject to copyright or Fernando and her team has created a convincing facsimile of Street View.) However, in the middle of the short, Roundtrip to Happiness expands its scope into something bigger: as it leaves the Philippines and examines other countries, it examines the strange arbitrariness of mapmaking and history, of how small imperial nations conquer larger ones, and juxtaposes the scale of our small archipelago made vast and the ability (or impotence?) of people trying to control all of it.
In Mata Kang Busay, a fortune teller loses his powers and makes increasingly dire sacrifices to a mystic waterfall in order to regain his power. In terms of form I wish it could have done a bit more with its premise, and the soundtrack choices during the film's climax gives unnecessary pomp to what is happening on the screen. That said it does make a point about how much people are willing to give up for their own survival, something that we see in its worst form today.
Kwits starts out navigating the well-trodden but welcome trope of navigating the bureaucratic hell of government and how it can both work against what it was intended to do and how it can dehumanize people on both sides: those operating within the bureaucracy and those on the outside trying to engage with it. But then it shows how people can find humanity and compassion within these cold, unfeeling systems. It is perhaps my favorite (new) short from this lineup: well-directed, tonally consistent and cathartic.
Mga Handum Nga Nasulat sa Baras is a cute tale about three boys in a seaside village dealing with an educational system that has been profoundly transformed in pandemic times. It's relatively light (and it's also a rap musical!) so even if it was terrible (it isn't!) it's impossible to dislike.
Films about the deaf community aren't exactly new, even to Cinemalaya: Mike Sandejas' Dinig Sana Kita (2009) is a prominent example, and outside Cinemalaya we have Prime Cruz's Isa Pa, With Feelings. But those films examined a relationship where a hearing person tries to understand their deaf or hard of hearing partner. In Bakit Di Mo Sabihin? written by Flo Reyes, a CODA (child of deaf adults) both parties are deaf or deaf mute and that is a given. The film, first and foremost, is a romantic drama about two people engaged in a very dysfunctional relationship; their disabilities have little to do with their relationship dysfunctions, if at all.
While I expected a lighter film (I decided to come into this blind) what I got was a dead serious relationship drama more in the vein of Fifth Solomon's Dulo (2021) or Alessandra De Rossi's 12 (2017). Like those two films, this film can be as exhausting, in both good and bad ways. Migs (JC De Vera) is bound to conservative values and his idealized notion of a wife forgoing her job in order to take care of the children, even if it doesn't make financial sense. Nat (Janine Gutierrez) views marriage as a partnership where both parties are involved in child rearing, and that her personal dreams can coexist with raising a family. The film jumps back and forth in time, showing happier times for the couple while showing their current situation.
In films in this genre, the couple's incompatibility is made explicit; the bulk of the heavy lifting lies in making the audience believe that that relationship, however dysfunctional, was a meaningful one. It is a delicate tightrope act and the end result is either a very tedious film or something remarkable. While the film's fractured timeline certainly helps, I feel the melodramatic third act cheapens it by not giving the characters time to meaningfully confront each other and gain closure. For a film that asks us (and its characters) why won't you say it? It doesn't do that, even if the outpouring of emotions is one-sided.
There is a subplot to the film concerning a deaf child whom Migs wants to help (in a positive display of his character's tendency to want to 'fix' people.) It certainly reflects society's prejudices towards our deaf or mute brothers and sisters, especially society's unwillingness to see the potential in people. It ends in a frustratingly open ended manner, but I think it works: there is absolutely nothing wrong with seeing the potential in a stranger, or in your romantic partner, regardless of one's preconceptions about them.
There is always one film every other Cinemalaya (barring the lean years of 2015, 2020 and 2021) featuring (usually worn-down) protagonists (usually with a troubled past) going on a journey (metaphorical or literal) of self discovery. The results often vary, depending on how the story concludes: films like Ronda (2014) end with violence or bleakness, films like Brutus (2008) end up being charming and profound, and films like Ang Katiwala (2012) devolve into an earnest, yet very silly, genre-mashed finale that on the whole takes itself way too seriously. TM Malones' Kargo, written by the late Joseph Israel Laban, is a great example of the last one.
Sara (Max Eigenmann) is a tough as nails cargo delivery driver whose work output is equaled only by her accident rate. She's plying the roads searching for the man (also a delivery driver) who killed her family in cold blood. During one such delivery run she comes across an orphaned girl (Myles Robles) and takes her in, eventually forming a relationship with her.
Most of Kargo is a relatively serious character study that takes quite a while to get off the ground (the previous paragraph takes up like 60 percent of the film). During this time. Sara endures all sorts of sexist behavior from fellow drivers and members of law enforcement. Although some of the scenes go nowhere, Max Eigenmann sells it nonetheless. The film slightly delves into the plight of typhoon survivors, but ultimately doesn't do much with it. While Malones' experience as a cinematographer contributes greatly to the film's visual look, he struggles to control the film's tone, eliciting horrified screams from the audience at inopportune moments.
Kargo will likely be remembered for its finale, which ends up being rather entertaining in its earnest silliness. If features 1) one of the slowest car chases in cinema history (the film even shows a signpost showing the speed limit of 20 kph, as if to lean into the joke) and 2) a character who not only teleports from one place to another, but also generates minions of his own as if he were a character from Mobile Legends (a similar discontinuity occurs in the recently concluded Obi Wan miniseries, so it happens to the best of us.)
While I wouldn't claim that sequence (or the movie as a whole) to be good in terms of form, it is very entertaining, perhaps the most entertaining full length I watched on day 1. Kargo may not necessarily make it to the top ranks of Cinemalaya history, but at the very least it is entertaining and memorable for its denouement.
There exists a paradox in films that depict soldiers viewed from the eyes of loved ones; in Jay Altarejos' Walang Kasarian ang Digmang Bayan (2020) Altarejos as a filmmaker tries to reconcile the military's role as a tool for state violence with his own experience with his late father, also a military man. In Sheenly Gener's debut film Bula sa Langit, there exists a similar paradox, in trying to acknowledge the role of soldiers as the arm of the state while also honoring and humanizing individual soldiers as exploited by the system that uses them for its own ends.
Bula sa Langit starts with a reunion: Wesley (Gio Gahol) reunites with his girlfriend Ritz after a tour in Marawi. He has trouble acclimating to civilian life, a pattern reminiscent of films like Kathryn Bigelows The Hurt Locker (2008) where because violence seeps deeply into a person's daily life as a soldier, they are unable to return to a life without it.
There are many little bits in the movie that add to a larger picture. Wesley's name comes from the actor Wesley Snipes, and many of Wesley's friends and family have misconceptions of soldiers borne from the same action films Snipes and his contemporaries starred in. They are unaware of the trauma and pain that comes with violence, in receiving it and inflicting it, regardless of whether it is for a righteous cause or not. While people argue for the existence of a "just war", Bula sa Langit notes that regardless of whether that war is justified or not, conflicts by themselves exact a heavy toll, both on the soldiers fighting these wars and on the civilians that end up as collateral damage.
This then leads us to the finale, which is the film's weakest part, influenced also by the paradox I mentioned earlier. What exactly is the film trying to say? It looks like it is trying to say or do two things at the same time, but whatever its point is, gets muddled. What does it say about the cycles of violence that soldiers are subjected to and the violence that they inflict? Perhaps a viewer may expect to find a cathartic moment where Wesley pours out his feelings and anxieties, but the film gives us no such thing.
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