My experience with Mongolian cinema is admittedly limited; having only seen historical films and quiet dramas, I went into Janchivdorj Sengedorj's The Sales Girl blind and I came out of it having watched one of the most unique films I've seen this year. The Sales Girl borrows, appropriates and reshapes various films to create a quirky, playful film that is more than the sum of its parts.
Saruul (Bayarjargal Bayartsetseg) is a college student who fills in for a classmate who broke her leg in banana-related shenanigans. She goes to work in a sex shop, where she quickly befriends Katya (Enkhtuul Oidovjamts), the eccentric owner of the shop.
Perhaps it would feel appropriate to call The Sales Girl a sex comedy, but it's only a small part in what eventually becomes Saruul's metamorphosis from a meek and withdrawn girl to a more confident, more self assured young woman. Her journey takes her to many different places, from her sexuality to her eventual life path to how she sees herself - a search for self in which the film finds its heart.
In one scene, Saruul comments on her friend's dog Bim. "He doesn't look like a dog," she says, as if the concept of a dog belonged to one thing only. This question of self identity manifests itself as contradictions in the main characters, in people being someone they're not: Saruul studies as a nuclear engineer but she has a penchant for art and drawing. Katya's character feels like she has no care in the world, but deep down she is a deeply hurt woman who has cared too much. And in the setting, The Sales Girl shows an increasingly industrialized and modernized Mongolia that is still deeply conservative.
QCinema QCShorts Competition Shorts Short Reviews
Before I start I'd like to acknowledge the selection jury who selected these films; each of the six films share thematic elements that make it feel more cohesive and not like a random assortment of shorts.
Before films were recognized as legitimate works of art and cultural artifacts worth preserving, they were considered disposable entertainment. I imagine people started actively preserving films because a particular film evoked something in them, as many works of art do. That scenario plays itself out in Jaime Morados' Ang Pagliligtas sa Dalagang Bukid, where a man tries desperately to rescue a film that he loves, breaking the barriers between fiction and reality. The film, as rough as it is in places, has its heart in the right place, its somber ending a dirge for experiences that exist only as fading memories and vague recollections.
A reflection of pandemic anxieties, Whammy Alcazaren's Bold Eagle frames its shots via the same peculiar, cellphone-like aspect ratio seen in Never Tear Us Apart (2018), its voyeuristic gaze fixated on bodies in various states of contortion and undress, almost daring us to look (or look away). But while his previous film deconstructed the ironies of the family unit, this one finds more thematic kinship with his earlier film Islands (2013), its protagonist trapped in an 'island' not of his own making, as the idyll of a cozy beach taunts him from outside his window, he finds solace in small screens that remain his sole connection to the outside world.
A disclaimer: I contributed to the crowdfunding for Glenn Barit's Luzonensis Osteoporosis, though prior to its premiere I had not seen it. Having seen the film, without any bias I can say that my contribution is not in vain. Essentially an OFW film but told in Barit's whimsical, surreal style, it's a reflection on the people who break their backs (sometimes literally) for this country by going abroad, and the economic and societal forces that push them into it, whether they like it or not.
Rocky De Guzman Morilla's Mga Tigre ng Infanta begins with an anxious rumbling that seems to resonate with its protagonist, Katrina. Upon visiting the wake of her grandmother, she feels an itch that only grows worse over time, as the land she calls home is encroached upon and forcibly transformed by people with capitalist interests. Even from the start the film links these vast ancestral lands and the bodies of the people born from the earth that they rightfully own: just as the land is subjected to unspeakable violence, there are bodies that are transformed, bodies that are mutilated, bodies that disappear.
A similar transformation can be seen in Austin Tan's Ngatta Naddaki y Nuang? where two friend traverse altered landscapes and people in search of a carabao. They both find that it is far more difficult to pick up the pieces of something that doesn't exist in the same way anymore, in terms of memory, spaces and people.
And finally, JT Trinidad's impressive the river that never ends has its protagonist, Baby (Emerald Romero) working for various clients, often filling a role or donning an identity that is not theirs: a placeholder for a lost loved one, a dancing partner, even a pet. Like Mga Tigre ng Infanta, there is a juxtaposition of spaces and bodies, here relating to rapid urbanization, the emergence of poverty in those spaces and the many ways that poverty inflicts violence upon the people who live in those spaces. Baby is framed in a backdrop of vast industrialized landscapes, in spaces that have changed over the years, in a city that feels unfamiliar and depersonalized. One can only wonder how Baby (or anyone, for that matter) can prevent themselves from disappearing into the noise.
Jamie (Anwen O'Driscoll) is a high schooler who moves in with her aunt and uncle after the sudden death of her father. As her aunt and uncle are both Jehovah's Witnesses, they invite her to activities together, because of course they'd do that. During one of these meetings, she meets Marike (June Laporte), and the two strike up a friendship. However, it is made abundantly clear that both parties are interested in other ways.
In many queer (love) stories, religion is something of a paradox. For belief systems that talk about love, it is ironic that some of the deepest, most intense kinds of love are forbidden; for belief systems that talk about truth, it is ironic that people are forced to live behind lies and not acknowledge what exists in plain sight. As Marike and Jamie's relationship deepens, a thought crossed my mind: is this affection genuine or is Marike being duplicitous, setting up a honeytrap? What eventually happens touches upon the ironies of faith and love, in that there is a kind of faith that is so deeply rooted and all consuming that people are locked into certain patterns or thought, holding on to the promise of something that may never come instead of holding to the here and now.
Directors Sarah Watts and Mark Slutsky build the tension between the two masterfully, each little action and gesture adding up. By the time it pays off, it feels absolutely intense. It feels particularly cathartic, and it also feels like as if we're intruding on these two.
Baptisms are usually acts of initiation, something that purifies the body and introduces a new member into the congregation. In one particularly exquisite scene, such an act serves instead as an acknowledgement of the 'sin' of loving, the establishment of a bond that doesn't go away completely even if things have irrevocably changed.
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