Me-Ann (Heaven Peralejo) is living the life. She's gone to a secluded retreat house to meet her policeman lover (Ian Veneracion,) whom she calls Chief. The night begins innocently enough, though Me-Ann feels that something is off. She isn't given much time to contemplate the situation, however, as a mysterious crazed intruder (Mon Confiado) enters the house and holds the two of them hostage. The specter of self-interest plagues the three characters of this movie from beginning to end - it is only through successive acts of empathy and understanding that an avenue of possible escape becomes apparent.
Shugo Praico uses the suspense thriller to interrogate the roots of systemic corruption in institutions meant to protect us. It becomes clear soon enough that Chief isn't the most virtuous of people, but he isn't just a singular bad apple. Instead he's the product of a culture that rots people like him from the inside, and it's made evident in how his initially by-the-book, idealistic character transforms into a facsimile of the man he hates the most, his father in law (Allan Paule, in a short but standout role.)
Mon Confiado's character, then, is a cipher. Why is he here? Is he telling the truth? Or is he just a crazy liar, just as bad or even worse than Chief? Praico is careful not to hurry along the plot, opting instead to peel back layer after layer of information, changing our perspective of each of the three central characters, playing on expectations and revealing just enough to make things interesting.
Then there's Heaven Peralejo, in her first lead role. Despite being a relative neophyte she is able to match her two experienced co stars beat for beat. Her character seems naive and trusting, perhaps too much for her own good, but the screenplay cleverly twists that notion into a critique of selective justice and impunity, in that some people are content to stay silent if justice is meted in their favor, following the words of Edward Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". To overlook injustice when it tangentially helps you ultimately damages all of us, though that is easier said than put into action: if your house is on fire and someone offers you a functioning fire hose, do you consider the intentions of the person offering, or do you use that hose? The film's third act illustrates how the answer to that choice isn't always easily apparent, and how people are often fooled into not doing the right thing.
Through the years we've seen Rodel Nacianceno (a.k.a. Coco Martin) evolve from an independent film actor to a mainstream superstar to a filmmaker. In that last regard, though he's made some significant strides in MMFFs past, he's still got a long way to go. Labyu With an Accent, written and directed by Martin, is a strange film. Incomplete is not exactly the word to describe it: it has all the things that should make it work, but something always feels just a bit off.
For starters, the film's meet cute feels outlandish and inadequate. Trisha (Jodi Sta. Maria) has her heart broken after she finds her fiancée Matt with another woman. She returns to the Philippines where she meets Gabo (Martin), a stripper who runs a rent-a-boyfriend service on the side. Curious, she tries the service and the two fall in love. At least, that's what the film desperately wants us to believe. Though Martin imbues Gabo with a fun yet charming goofiness, the two don't feel like a legit couple: Trisha seems to be just going along for the ride, and is more bemused than anything else. Writing good romance is far more than inserting random kilig moments. The relationship has to be believable to work, and the moments have to build up well for any emotional payoff to work in the end.
What follows is just as strange, the film building upon boneheaded decision upon boneheaded decision with frightening intensity: Trisha returns to the US, noncommittal on the state of her romance with Gabo. Gabo, on the other hand, seems to be doing an any% speedrun to get into a relationship with Trisha and rushes over to L.A. (on a tourist visa, mind you!) to begin their relationship. Trisha's parents don't like Gabo and the two of them leave and settle in an apartment. Gabo, the epitome of toxic masculinity masquerading as traditional values, disallows Trisha from getting work of her own. Instead, he tries to work a bunch of jobs (all of which are illegal because he's on a tourist visa??) and gets fired every time because he's either not suited for the job or someone narcs on him. At one point someone calls ICE (the immigration police, also wearing the wrong uniforms!) to catch him, to no avail. It's a miracle Gabo isn't sent to Guantanamo or something.
The script is half-baked, and could have benefitted from a couple more revisions (or fifty). To be fair, the film does touch upon a couple of interesting topics, but the film also gets in the way of its own ideas. Trisha is a member of the diaspora who falls in love with a fellow kabayan who stays home, and that could make for interesting dynamics. The problem is Trisha's family doesn't feel like an immigrant family. Trisha could have lived in a random posh neighborhood in the Philippines and the film would have changed very little. Trisha herself, the reason behind the film's title, has an inconsistent accent and doesn't sound like someone who has spent most of her life abroad. In fact, compare her to Gabo's female cousins, even Donita Rose's character - they sound different somehow, and the reason why is not easy to articulate. Trisha could easily find a career of her own in the Philippines - why not live there with her grandmother instead? It would have solved most of her problems and it makes the central conflict of the third act contrived.
It's a noble effort and Martin seems to have the resources to further hone his craft. I hope he continues to do so.
A few months ago, I watched a JAV titled "A World With Exceptionally Low Hurdles to Sex." It must have been a popular title because there have been at least nine of these and I was watching the sixth in the series. The film is exactly what it says on the title: this is a world where the concept of moral or ethical boundaries do not exist, and anyone can just have sex with anyone else at any time. Want to bone that cute cashier at the mall? Go ahead, they're game. Want to lick that tootsie roll you met while riding the bus? Just make sure you get off at the right stop. Wanna give your family members some extra vitamin D at the dinner table? Just wait a sec I'll just set aside the soy sauce, don't wanna get my shirt stained aaaaaand let's have a healthy nutritious meal. It was all presented so semi-seriously and came off as so patently ridiculous that I kinda forgot to jack off and decided instead to see how far they'd take the concept. Let's just say the human imagination is both wondrous and terrifying at the same time.
Sometimes there comes along a film so ridiculously horrendous, it's hard not to avert your eyes from the ongoing disaster. Joel Lamangan's My Father, Myself is more than any simple car crash, however: this is watching three burning dumpsters full of shit loaded onto three trucks, all colliding with each other in the middle of a crowded children's parade, mowing down several dozen pre-schoolers along the way. "A human brain conceived this?" I started to wonder, but then I remembered cursed anime does this all the time. Maybe Joel Lamangan watched some hentai and wanted to get in on the action.
Robert (Jake Cuenca) is a human rights lawyer. He's so dedicated to his job that in his office there's a poster that says "Human Rights" on it. Joel Lamangan is keen to make sure that we know that fact. Because soon enough, we learn that maybe the most important human right is the right to sexytime your adopted children.
Robert takes in his adopted son, Matthew (Sean de Guzman) after Matthew's dad, Domeng (Allan Paule) gets gunned down in what I can only call a float by shooting - a duo of masked guys slowly float over to Domeng as he's giving a speech and shoot him in the chest. Instead of running over to the river (canal?) to catch the bad guys, a crowd forms around Domeng's corpse because of course they would. The elementary school-aged Matthew settles in and Robert and his wife Amanda (Dimples Romana) treat him like a son... at least, one of them does.
There's something My Father, Myself doesn't tell us in its promotional materials, and that is the fact that there are actually TWO pseudo-incestuous relationships in this film. Robert and Amanda have a daughter, Mica (Tiffany Gray) who wants Matthew to give her some brotherly love. During their first meeting, Mica gives her new brother a "Hi, Matthew!" before panning to several studio pics of the child, then panning back to Mica as she says "Hi, Matthew!" again. The fact that she said it twice clearly means she needs 3 tablets of Matthewcetamol every day during meals.
Years pass and it's clear that the Westermarck Effect does not exist in this universe as Mica's still got the hots for Matthew. He's trying to push back against it but isn't averse to sexytime here and there with his sister. What's weird is that their university friends seem to be shipping the two of them together, even though they explicitly grew up as brother and sister. After looking at their bar exam results (which seems to imply that like twenty two people took the bar that year instead of tens of thousands) Mica leans in for a kiss that Matthew quickly rebuffs.
While Matthew and Mica struggle to tell their parents the truth, it looks like Robert's favoritism of his only son is more than it seems. The two of them are actually in love with each other, as Matthew reminds Robert of Domeng, with whom he had an affair before he died. Robert even takes out a shoebox nd reminisces with a 6x9 glossy photo of Domeng, because in this universe, all photographs are taken professionally at a studio. (A selfie? what's that?) The film treats this doomed father-son romance as some sort of tragedy, overlooking the fact that Robert basically groomed Matthew all these years because he looks like someone he had sex with. Robert even laments at the end the fact that he couldn't live a life that's true to himself. Look dude, the issue is not that you like other men, the issue is the fact that YOU WANT TO BOINK YOUR SON IN THE ASS BECAUSE HE LOOKS LIKE YOUR DEAD LOVER!
The sheer audacity of this premise boggles the mind, and it also boggles the mind that no one ever in the course of making this film thought, "hey, maybe this isn't such a good idea." My Father, Myself is the funniest, most hilarious comedy of the MMFF - perhaps the funniest comedy in this festival in many years, and is highly recommended to be seen with friends, drunk and laughing, with rationality and reason borked out of your minds by intentional intoxication.
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