In a country where the needs of the many often outweigh the needs of the one, dreams are left by the wayside. To many who live hand to mouth, or to those who live life precariously on a tightrope - one emergency away from financial ruin - having a dream of one's own feels illegal. Perhaps the gold standard of films that tackle this premise in recent times is Remton Zuasola's Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (2010), though countless other films from all regions of the Philippines have iterations of the same story. It's a testament to how much this tug of war between personal desires and larger social responsibilities has become, for better or worse, a pan-Filipino trait. The onus is now on whether the premise is done well, and very few films of recent times has done it as well as Cris Fuego's Pinikas.
Inspired by the life of Fuego's father (and Cris Fuego is himself an OFW), Pinikas is set in Pintuyan, a small island community in Southern Leyte in the mid 2000s. Maya (Angela Villarin) has just graduated high school and judging from the medal on her shoulders (as well as the wall of academic achievements in her modest family home) it's clear that she's very smart. However, as her friends pursue job prospects elsewhere, Maya is stuck in her hometown, opting instead to sell pinikas (a sort of dried fish or seafood) and do other odd jobs. In their small community, the only way to get out of a hand-to-mouth existence is to marry someone rich (e.g. a foreigner) or leave the town for a job in the city or abroad. For Maya, the thought of leaving her little brother and sister behind is unfathomable; but as her deadbeat father Mario (Michael Bacalso), who sold his pump boat to pay for his late wife's medical fees, relies on pipe dreams to keep the family afloat, she is forced to become the breadwinner for the family.
Maya soon enters a partnership with Nilo (Jade Makawili), a fisherman who has his own, different dream of freedom. Maya sells Nilo's catch, and the two share the profit. Soon, however, this partnership blossoms into romance. Pinikas does what many other romantic films fail to do: have a romance develop organically, relying on the chemistry of its two leads while making the proceedings believable. Villarin in particular is a revelation; a lot of times the actress's screen presence reminded me of a young Nadine Lustre. In any case, she's in good company. That said, the better the chemistry, the heavier the heartbreak that inevitably follows.
It's not all sadness, however. Pinikas takes the "com" part of rom com seriously and delivers some genuinely funny moments. A scene where language and mistranslation leads to several double entendres in a row left the audience laughing. Pinikas is a perfect example of a simple, personal story done well, and I hope more regional productions like this follow.
Almost four years ago I watched a version of Vince Tanada's Ang Bangkay for a special, one time screening. Suffice it to say it was not the best experience and I walked out. I wrote something about the experience of watching the movie (perhaps a reflection of peri-pandemic moviegoing reluctance) but that is not a review of the movie itself. As I walked out of that film, I didn't feel like I had the right to judge or look critically at something I did not finish. At the time, I thought, without all the people coughing in the theater, I probably would have stayed until the end. This time around, I wanted to give this film a fair shot.
This version of Ang Bangkay, based on Tanada's Palanca award-winning script, is considerably shorter than the version I saw four years ago. And it is all the better for it: compared to that version, this version of Ang Bangkay is taut, focused in on its characters and story, and takes fewer segues. The good parts mostly come from its many similarities to Mike de Leon's Kisapmata (including its shocking ending). Ang Bangkay is a film that shows how authoritarian power is maintained - mostly by people who want a piece of that power for their own benefit. That hobnobbing disregards conscience, or any moral qualms for that matter; it only exists in order to acquire more power. And left unchecked, that power becomes something demonic. It is a power dynamic that, we are shown, is a feature of every household, not just that of the 'protagonist' Corinthos, as if to show that the potential towards authoritarian rule exists in any social stratum. Add that to a decent to excellent ensemble cast (with a particularly effective turn from Mercedes Cabral) and the film, at least on paper, is decent.
That is the extent of the praise I will give this film. Tanada and co. were evidently going for a sepia-like faded photograph look to the period production, but it is very inconsistent and the aggressively brown color grading makes most of the film look like poop from a butt. But the worst thing about Ang Bangkay is its lead actor, Tanada himself. Compared to his capable cast, Tanada's Segismundo Corintho sticks out like a circus clown in a cemetery. He acts at a higher, hammier register compared to his co-actors, and most of the scenes with him look silly when he should be menacing. It doesn't help that, considering the parallels to Kisapmata, his performance will inevitably be compared to Vic Silayan's, and let me tell you, he is nowhere near that level. He is not even in the same galaxy as Silayan's legendary performance. The giant slab of Delimondo that he is, Segismondo Corintho would not look out of place in a delicatessen.
So while this version of Ang Bangkay is a much better reflection of its script, it's still just aggressively okay at best.
Joel Lamangan's All About Her begins with the report of a grisly crime: a burned car, a charred body that might be of a missing beauty queen, and a missing prime suspect - the beauty queen's policeman boyfriend. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, detectives Lontoc (Marco Gomez) and Suarez (Angelica Cervantes) interview the person serving as the sole link between the two: fellow beauty queen Olivia (Kelley Day). Olivia was the best friend of the missing beauty queen, Isa (Yuki Sonoda) and was the very least acquainted with her boyfriend, William (Tony Labrusca.)
For anyone with any experience watching crime dramas, it's pretty obvious who is behind it all. It helps that Kelley Day gives a great performance as Olivia. However, while the movie purports to show us the dark side of the pageant business, most of the problems in this film are due to people being petty or ambitious. The part where candidates exchange sexual favors from sponsors or people in power is barely touched upon. Ultimately, the film does not build up to anything substantial.
Another point against All About Her is in its denouement, where the crime is shown in full. What happens in it stretched my personal sense of disbelief a tad too much; if anything, it showed me how beauty queens don't skip arm and leg day. Those ladies can lift.
On paper, the premise of Clyde Capistrano's Lanaya sounds ludicrous, but somehow it works: after finding out that the notorious widow of a murderous former president is staying in a quiet town, Maya (Gigi Hernandez) orders her operative Jerry (Jun Nayra) to spy on said widow, using Kaloy (Shaun Salvador), a nursing student, to gain the trust of said widow. The detectives are doing this because the widow in question, Aurora (Madeleine Nicolas) is suspected of killing her late husband and managing the country-wide apparatus of extrajudicial killings her husband has nurtured ever since he was president. As Kaloy goes about his work, questions emerge: who exactly are they up against? Will Kaloy forgo a chance at justice for the country out of fear, or out of a burgeoning relationship with Aurora, who is in a way the mother figure he never had?
Lanaya doesn't always go smoothly as a film. Suffice it to say the treatment is quite rough at points. Kaloy's uncle is an art dealer and there is a sideplot regarding a valuable art piece that Aurora's husband stole from the Chinese that never gets properly resolved. There are times where the story suddenly becomes the crew trying to teach Kaloy how to play chess as a means of allowing him to gain leverage over Aurora. There are tonal shifts between silliness and seriousness.
But what makes it work are committed performances from all the actors, especially the central duo of Shaun Salvador and Madeleine Nicolas. Salvador gives depth to a deeply conflicted character who is torn between a genuine opportunity for connection (despite what that implies) and helping countless victims he doesn't know, in a system he personally despises. Nicolas is quietly menacing as Aurora, whose savvy and hidden depths create a far more frightening figure than normal. Of note is also Aurora's right hand Garret (a delightfully unhinged Rolando Inocencio) who enforces Aurora's every command.
While it's not the most polished film out there, Lanaya kept me hooked from moment to moment.
Louie Ignacio's Desperada begins with a striking image: a naked woman, covered in filth, walking through a cemetery. Said woman, who we will later know is named Brenda (Robb Guinto), is taken in by Miriam (Sue Prado), a kind soul who runs an unofficial, impromptu shelter for abandoned, mentally ill people like Brenda. Along with a varied cast of characters, Brenda begins the slow process of healing.
One of Desperada's main points is that the shelter Miriam and her partner Carol (Mercedes Cabral) is running is not officially sanctioned. They mostly source their funds from donations. It is also not clear if they have any professional medical or psychiatric support, though they do have access to tranquilizers. This only emphasizes the fact that access to mental health care is limited, especially for the urban poor and marginalized individuals. However, because the shelter is informal in nature, the film also downplays the role of constant medical care in the improvement of these characters - their breakthroughs and moments of improvement are depicted as coming either seemingly from nowhere or merely as a result of living together in a safe environment, which is not realistic at all. Proper mental health comes from a stable environment, medication, and regular counselling and therapy.
That's not the only problem in Desperada, which lies in pretty much everything else. With all the random sex scenes, Desperada is a movie that wouldn't feel out of place in the Vivamax lineup. It inadvertently feeds into stereotypes involving mental illness and hypersexuality while only superficially touching upon the many complex psychological and mental issues that these experiences come from. Brenda's mental illness stems from genetics and from a history of sexual abuse by a father who happens to be at the very least bisexual. Her on and off boyfriend's own psychoses stem from a history of drug use and also a history of sexual abuse from policemen. But their depictions, as well as the depictions of the other tenants of the shelter are mostly the same: women are depicted as nymphomaniacs and men are depicted as aggressively sexual or at least susceptible to horny acts. In addition, aside from Brenda's father's bisexuality there are careless or throwaway lines, such as Paolo (Jorge Guda), a stereotypically gay (and possibly trans) tenant at the shelter that feed into stereotypes regarding mental illness, homosexuality and dysphoria. I don't think it's necessarily intentional, and depiction is not necessarily endorsement, but I feel the script could have been written with more care in this regard.
That said, Robb Guinto is given a lot of space to act here compared to her usual VMX productions, and she manages to give one of her best acting performances as Brenda.
Rommel Ricafort is no stranger to the romance genre: his only other romantic film, the 2017 film You With Me (credited on IMDB as a 2020 film) starring Devon Seron, also co-starred a handful of South Korean actors. This new film, also co-written by Shine Ricafort shares a couple of story elements: parental issues, a handsome, South Korean suitor and a twist ending. Unfortunately, while the film is cute and is a significant improvement compared to the earlier film, it still shares the same problems with that previous film in that the romance is undercooked.
The setup this time certainly stretches disbelief, but reins it in just enough to be barely plausible. Candy (Arci Munoz) is an OB-GYN who loses a patient and baby thanks to apparent negligence. With her finances all but drained thanks to persistent legal harrassment, she's ten million pesos in debt. She's offered a partial way out of that debt, however: serve as a surrogate for a baby and half of that debt is gone. Candy decides to go to Bohol to start anew, where she meets Dave (Kang Dong-gun), the estranged son of a wealthy CEO who starts off the film covered in someone else's blood.
The two bond over chocolate, as Dave helps out with a local chocolate house in order to grow their business (and in doing so, prove himself to his father.) A few cute moments ensue, and to be fair they manage to make the proceedings cute. However, neither the romantic and non-romantic aspects of the script feel fleshed out. There are glimpses of how the chocolate is made, but we don't really see either Candy or Dave learning the specifics, nor do we see how Dave manages to increase their business (I assume he uses outside capital and his nepo baby connections to help) and after they are no longer useful to the story, Dave's business partners all but disappear from the story. The best romantic moments between the two can mostly be seen in a flashback sequence instead of organic moments scattered throughout the film. And the central conflicts that both characters face (i.e. Candy's parentless baby and Dave's daddy issues) are either resolved off screen or made moot by certain plot contrivances. It also doesn't help that the film is in a hurry to wrap things up after a certain point.
Sweet Escape is, much like You With Me, superficial fluff. It is entertaining fluff to be sure, but it is ultimately forgettable.
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