Cinemalaya 2021 Main Competition Short Shorts Reviews

It's that time of the year again - Cinemalaya time! This edition has 13 films on its slate - in my recollection, the most entries in any Cinemalaya edition ever! Here are a bunch of short reviews of all the films in the main competition section:

Shorts A

I've seen Maski Papano already at QCinema 2020, and it still holds up after all these months. It's a humorous film about finding ourselves (and others) in communal isolation. As the first short of Shorts A (and thus, the first film I've seen in this festival) it's a great way to start things off.

Crossing consists of a relatively simple conceit, where a man planning something nefarious during a bus ride comes into a bunch of complications. But it also shows us how despite the best of intentions, thanks to the economic systems we live in, people are forced into cycles of violence.

There's a lot about Kawatan sa Salog that is intriguing, but ultimately it might have bitten off more than it could chew. It's beautifully shot and lends itself to multiple watches, but I'm not sure of the overall effect (at least with the two times where I watched it).

An Sadit na Planeta's visual conceit is the best thing about the film; curving the surroundings into a small sphere in the center of the frame. Director Arjanmar Ribeta uses the most of that concept to tell a story about a man living in a space for 40 days. Given the limited time in this small planet, this confined space of self is liminal, a transition between isolation, self discovery, and, as the closing shot seems to indicate, freedom. Given such a strong visual concept, the film's one weakness is its tendency to overnarrate, but it doesn't distract from the overall experience.

There are a lot of richly textured layers to Jayson Fajardo's Looking for Raffliesias and Other Fleeting Things. The most overt in my view is the way the film makes connections between the search for queer identity and mythologic creatures, and how the perception of these mythological creatures is tied into how people are othered and misunderstood, forced to hide (literally and figuratively). But the film also explores how misperception allows people to misconstrue evil or malice to things or people that they do not understand, while true evil works silently in the background. The problem is that this is all hidden behind a thick layer of ambiguity that makes the film harder to parse.

On the other hand, Out of Body runs into its subtextual layers seemingly by sheer coincidence (but if these layers are intentional, then that makes this my favorite short of this particular set.) On one hand it can be surface-read as how women in the entertainment industry (or women in general) are made into targets of violence by men, often by coercion and a toxic culture. In fact, the ending is an obvious metaphor for how men treat these women only as bodies (one character even notes that "(they) already have everything that (they) need" while discarding everything else.) It is, for all intents and purposes, a depiction of the loss of these women's agency. But the film can also be read as the disorientation one feels when they are governed by people (again, mostly men) who use misdirection, obfuscation and a lack of transparency to get what they want, whether the governed want that or not - something a lot of us are feeling right now.

And finally for this set of shorts, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Lola Mayumi would feel right at home at Virgin Labfest, as it fits the one-act play structure perfectly. But this is not merely a play on film as director Shiri de Leon deftly uses the tools of cinema to depict a woman's search for her sexual liberation and how sexuality can be repressed and shaped by old traumas. Certainly one of the most entertaining shorts of the entire lineup, and a strong contender for audience choice.

Shorts B

Another alumnus from QCinema 2020 is Namnama en Lolang, a story about frontliners in the time of COVID-19 and the people they leave behind. It's technically simple, but it packs a strong emotional punch, even months after I watched it the first time.

When I was a kid, my Catholic sectarian school (n.b. I'm not Catholic but that's irrelevant lol) gave us all a checklist-type questionnaire asking us about certain things. As a bunch of goody-two-shoes pre-teens that didn't know any better, we didn't know what "masturbation" meant and some of us took the explanation of the word in the questionnaire, "playing with your own" as "playing on your own", i.e. playing alone. So they ticked the checkbox. Cue several exasperated trips to the guidance counselor for about a dozen confused students. For some reason, that's the first memory I recalled when seeing the next film: Kids on Fire is one of my favorite Cinemalaya films of the year, a humorous exploration of pre-teenage sexuality and all the fire and brimstone that comes with it. Its conflation of sexual awakening with eschatological ideas and imagery makes a lot of sense, because our awakening into the world of sex is indeed an ending in a way: the end to innocence, the end to a naive understanding of our own bodies. AND: Mystica's in this film. Mystica in a Cinemalaya film, I didn't think I would ever say that in my lifetime.

Beauty Queen is an account of the life of Kumander Liwayway, famed guerrilla commander during World War II. While fascinating, it only serves as the origin story of her revolutionary career, choosing to eschew showing her exploits in battle in favor of showing her motivations behind joining the revolutionary forces. It's an interesting idea, ripe for further expansion, though even with the limitations of the short film, it manages to do things that other, longer, more expensive period films fail to do.

Ate O.G. explores the divide between classes and the experiences the 'servant class' of househelp and other miscellaneous workers have during this unprecedented event. The film makes them (and their problems) visible. The film doesn't aim for eliminating these class divides (at least permanently); but there is temporary solace and solidarity in mutual understanding, empathy, and, among other things, getting high together. I guess I can get behind that.

There is a quality to some conversations that make them fascinating to watch, but unfortunately that's more the exception than the rule. I wanted to like The Dust in Your Place, a story about a cartoonist-writing team as they try to sort out their relationship, but the end result left me wanting. It doesn't do anything with the cartoon idea - a missed opportunity given the richness of that visual format. Ultimately, its biggest weakness is its centerpiece -  the central conversation, which starts to become tedious after around 5 minutes. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood when I watched this, or it's a preference problem - the film just isn't my cup of tea.

And finally we have the only documentary in the entire lineup - Ang Mga Nawalan ng Pag-asa at Panlasa, a film that tackles the hardships of Ilocano food business owners during a time when owning a restaurant is harder than ever. It gains even more resonance considering the director of the film - a videographer who lost his job during the pandemic - faces similar economic uncertainties with the subjects of his film. If there's anything I can say to the film's credit, it is that it made me crave all that delicious looking food, and that's perhaps the best compliment I can give it.

*

Cinemalaya coverage will continue as the festival content is spread out over the month. Stay tuned to this space for more wacky reviews.

Notes on: Show Me What You Got (Cvetko, 2019)

 

I'm sure everyone and their dog has written about the fact that this is a movie about three people who love each other without judgement. That's definitely true, and there aren't a lot of examples of that. I could also go on about how I think the film makes a number of creative decisions that I don't necessarily agree with, or how it gets tropes and audiovisual elements from a certain genre of film (*cough*frenchnewwave*cough*) and reapplies it for this new story, or how the characters don't really have a lot to do except mope around or gallivant around the world until a major conflict in the third act. Or how the ending feels melodramatic and out of left field. The film is obviously flawed.

But instead, I'd like to talk about something else that I think the film is trying to say. Show Me What You Got is a film about displacement, a story that means a lot personally to its director, herself an immigrant: literally a person displaced from their homeland. It is a displacement not only of space; the entire film is also a recollection, a story that exists in the past and told in the present, a displacement of time. All the three protagonists are themselves displaced in a way. Nassim is the most obvious example, working as a fight trainer in the US, away from his family in Iran; Marcello's displacement is voluntary, having escaped his homeland to escape his responsibilities as well. Christine's displacement is physical and emotional: after the death of her grandfather, she is homeless and without an anchor. In one of the film's pre-pandemic moments, there are scenes of a pro-immigrant protest in the Trump Era, and in what is perhaps the one scene that stands out the most, the trio formalizes their relationship in a boat in a desert, itself a visual metaphor of displacement, of things not being where they should be.

And that gets to the heart of what I think the film is trying to say: in a state of displacement, one finds comfort in others, especially others who are undergoing the same thing. There is solidarity in that. And even if one is displaced, when you are with the ones you love, you are exactly where you need to be.

This review was originally posted on letterboxd: https://boxd.it/22AJY7

The film is available streaming on Upstream.ph, among other sources

Vivamax and Chill, with a little Netflix on the Side: thoughts on My Amanda, Silab, two DY movies and Death of a Girlfriend

 

Alessandra de Rossi's directorial debut begins with a Malick-esque shot of a starfield, giving the proceedings a sense of grandeur and self importance that, upon viewing the finished product, doesn't exactly add up. My Amanda is a personal story, told in the smallest scales, about two people who share a special bond.

The film mostly consists of vignettes showing TJ (Piolo Pascual) and Amanda (Alessandra de Rossi) hanging out, engaging in banter, and being the best of friends. Pascual and de Rossi have good chemistry with each other and the scenes are fun, though in real life I probably wouldn't be the kind of person to hang out with Amanda, who I found grating after the first 20 minutes. (That probably says more about me than it says anything about the two main characters.) Amanda is loud, fun, sometimes annoying, sometimes a mess, but TJ hangs out with her anyway and treats her like a dear friend, through thick and thin.

That's basically the entire movie, a premise that could be done in 20 minutes but is stretched out to 90. It's not bad per se, and it's definitely better than the dragged out histrionics of 12 (2017), which was also written by the actress, but it's not for everyone. To its credit it serves as a positive depiction of a heterosexual platonic relationship. I'm glad that TJ isn't revealed to be asexual or gay, because I feel that would diminish the nature of their bond - it will serve as an excuse and another indication that men cannot form meaningful relationships with women without sex being involved.

That said, we don't really know much about TJ at all. Although he is the point of view character, we learn nothing about TJ and everything about Amanda - through his eyes, but without any desire nor viewed through a particular gaze. If anything it reminds me of Joel Ferrer's Elise (2019), though in that film desire definitely was in the picture, and at the same time we know more about the guy (Bert) because that film explores his character as well.

It helps that the film is helmed and written by a woman, though that brings up another point. TJ the character is based on de Rossi's male friends, and Amanda is based on de Rossi herself - in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that was her true personality on display. But all this says something about the filmmaker too - writing and making a film about how your friend/s love/s you, secretly, in your absence - almost like the filmmaker has a deep need to be loved, seeking the validation that comes with it. At the very least, I can relate to that.

If you have read this blog for any substantial amount of time, you'd know that Joel Lamangan isn't exactly my favorite filmmaker. While he did make a couple of decent movies in the nineties, his present output, while prolific, leaves much to be desired. It is with that thought that I begin this "review" of his latest film Silab, a film that is thoroughly baffling, a film that transcends logic or reason, copping elements from older, better films and creating this soup of unintelligible garbage.

The story is about an OFW who comes home after a long absence. His wife is happy to see him and eager to make another child (why she'd want another child given their financial situation is off, but I'm not here to judge.) OFW husband doesn't want that. Frustrated sexually by her husband's unwillingness to reciprocate, she seduces her husband's friend, and they do the sexy stuff. But OFW husband and his friend have secrets that they don't want to reveal to anyone else...

The film evokes sexy films of decades past, but somehow makes it gaudier, trashier, and thoroughly unsexy. The main characters aren't really people, but more like tropes injected into mannequins; singular character traits that don't add up to anything meaningful. The film also has a penchant for plot points that don't go anywhere: in one scene, husband's friend (I don't care to know their names) sees that a cat is chowing on his breakfast. Any normal, sane person would try to scare the cat away with a loud sound. This guy? He shoots the cat with a fucking gun. No one in the small community hears the gunshots (or maybe they're used to random gunshots in the morning) and the gun isn't brought up again later. In another scene, horny wife is boning this random bald dude. She doesn't finish, and bald dude is upset (jeez, just jack off man) so in response she pours boiling water on his peepee. That plot point isn't brought up again, bald dude doesn't show up later to arrest horny wife for assault, and it ends up irrelevant to the bigger plot.

In many other scenes, the characters are either inconsistent or don't act like normal human beings. In one scene, wife wants the D and seduces her husband. Husband is pragmatic and refuses. Later, after getting drunk, husband wants the V and she... rejects him? This is what she wants, isn't it? She slaps him twice and leaves him as he slumps down crying like the pathetic character that he is. Let's not forget the film's overt racism towards horny Arabs, as that's apparently still a thing in 2021.

I can go on for a few more paragraphs, but I won't waste any more of your time. If you need a good wank, just watch porn or use your imagination. The people who made this film either didn't do the latter, or did it too much without thought to what comes next.

I don't really have much to say about Darryl Yap's Ang Babaeng Walang Pakiramdam, and that might be the film's greatest problem. Without all the filler and padding, the film has just enough substance as one of his Vincentiment shorts, which is in itself not enough.

Perhaps those used to Yap's penchant for deliberately being offensive or confrontational to the audience (including a complete lack of sensitivity to the issues at hand) will expect the main character's condition to be used for laughs. It isn't - instead it is the disability of the main supporting character (played by Jerald Napoles) that is used for comedy.

Instead, the protagonist's condition is turned into the punchline of an 83 minute long joke. The film doesn't feel like anything beyond its central idea - the idea of a woman who cannot feel who suddenly feels love. Yap's treatment of the material doesn't make the main character human, she feels like a prop. It's the same thing with his other film Tililing, and in both films there is a preoccupation with an idea without considering all the other things that make a movie work.

In Paglaki Ko, Gusto Kong Maging Pornstar, a dying man wants Ara Mina (who plays a semi-fictionalized version of herself) to make another sexy film. She does so, and recruits three actresses who were known for acting in sexy films to help train a new sexy star.

From the get-go, I find the title to be a bit of a problem. There is a distinction between outright porn and a sexy movie, and treating the latter like the former diminishes the latter. While it could be argued that sexy movies were often made with titillation in mind, the content is far less explicit than actual porn - and nevertheless, some of these films are rife with sociopolitical commentary not present in their porn counterparts. Perhaps the most notable exception to the explicitness of the content would be the "pene" movies of the 1980s that showed unsimulated sex -  though of the four main sexy actresses in this film, only Alma Moreno had a career at that time; sexy movies of the 1990s and early 2000s were different beasts entirely in terms of tone and content.

But I digress. The story behind Paglaki Ko, Gusto Kong Maging Pornstar is almost non-existent; the few story elements that exist in the film can be removed to the film's benefit. In fact, some of the best scenes in the film are the ones that are unscripted and involve little to no involvement from the director - those scenes are fascinating little glimpses into a facet of Philippine movie history that not a lot of people talk about today. It would have been interesting to see the trajectories of these ladies' careers - including a frank discussion about  exploitation and abuse within the industry - but of course the film doesn't care about any of that.

To be fair, the film does a (decent? maybe just adequate) job in trying to humanize its four characters. But anyone else is either underdeveloped, one dimensional, a caricature, or at worst, just a prop for the story to move forward which is not very surprising given who is in charge.

That said, perhaps the worst movie I've seen in this batch of movies is Yam Laranas' Death of a Girlfriend. This Rashomon like tale about, well, a dead girl and the men who might have killed her is nothing new, full of cliches, and predictable from the first minute. It doesn't help that the film is full of cringey vignettes featuring the girl and her boyfriend. There's a reason for this cringeyness, but that doesn't excuse the fact that a viewer has to go through it to experience the rest of the story.

While it's more technically accomplished than three of the five films I've talked about today, It's simply the kind of film that I don't care about anymore. There are too many of these kinds of films for my taste, using a woman's death as some sort of twist. Even Rashomon considered the victim's point of view, and that was seventy years ago. Here, we don't really get to know the titular girlfriend at all; only the fact that she is now a corpse, and a means to tell a story that honestly didn't need to be told.

notes on A Girl + A Guy

 

In the Simpsons season 7 episode 24, Abraham Simpson, Homer's father, tells his teenage son: 

"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too."

It's a sobering, scary thought. As children grow older and the gap between generations begins to increase, what's in the here and now feels more alien and distant. Granted, people will still act upon their basic wants and needs - sex, companionship, living (or trying to live) with dignity - those things are not in doubt. The difference lies in the ways in which we act upon those things and the ways in which we react to those things. Our approach to interacting with others has changed compared to, say, a decade ago - sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in profound ways.

The end credits for Erik Matti's latest film is a dedication to the filmmakers' children, and it is immediately clear to me that this is not an upper middle class youth film in the style of Gino Santos' early works, nor is it a wistful exploration of how the youth comes of age like in Glenn Barit's Cleaners. This film is Erik Matti's attempt at making a youth film - and through it, an attempt at understanding his childrens' generation. Although some of the characteristics of his generation leak onto the finished product, for the most part  the film doesn't feel like it is an appropriation of youth culture, but rather an exploration of it. It helps that the film's screenwriters are part of the generation Matti is exploring, and with this film he surrounds himself with younger collaborators.

The film's narrative meanders from place to place, telling the stories of its titular two protagonists in little pieces. It isn't as structured as many are accustomed to, and in a way it works. There is no definitive beginning or end, just things that either peter out over time or end in figurative and emotional violence.

Marketing for the film may have you believe that these two will end up with each other romantically, but that doesn't really happen. They don't formally meet until the middle of the film and their paths diverge from there. The building of their friendship hits a roadblock in the second half, which also stands for a major shift in the story. In this second half, the two protagonists' lives are put on hold thanks to the pandemic. What felt like an ever-moving, dynamic lifestyle comes to a complete standstill. It is here, far from the first half's forced raunchiness, where things come into perspective and A Girl + A Guy comes into its own. It honestly feels like a completely different movie. The film becomes introspective, looking back at what now feels like a completely distant past. 

The film's two protagonists are flawed human beings, but their life paths are different, the film treating their individual character development arcs in different ways. Arguably, it's the girl's story of self actualization that feels more fleshed out. With the guy, he aimlessly moves from hookup to hookup, screwing his way through life, until it doesn't work anymore. That in itself is okay (at least, it's a story that's been explored many times before), but there isn't a lot of follow through on the consequences of his actions. For example, a subplot regarding the ambiguities of sexual consent in certain situations is touched upon then unceremoniously dropped after the events of the second half, and the character doesn't think about it ever again. (One might think that this subplot is less about understanding the youth and more about the filmmaker trying to inject personal beliefs unto the work, but your interpretation is as good as mine.)

Perhaps the film would have been better served as a series, where there is more space for characters and plotlines to breathe, rather than be locked into a feature film format. With a streaming service like Upstream.ph, it's definitely doable. As it is, however, while I don't doubt A Girl + A Guy's sincerity, its many flaws prevent me from thoroughly enjoying it.

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.

A Review of Now Streaming, a Series of Pandemic Stories

 

We've all been affected by this pandemic in different ways, and the CignalPlay series Now Streaming tries to articulate that in audiovisual form, telling six stories from varying genres depicting pandemic life. The set of six stories can be divided into three pairs, based on theme or genre, but each gives us a distinct look at life during this unprecedented historical event,

Perhaps the most lighthearted of the six pandemic stories is Carlo Catu's From My Window, a love story about a man who distantly observes, and falls in love with, his next door neighbor. It speaks to a primal need for people to seek others, amplified by the isolation and loneliness imposed upon us by quarantine. There's a lot of stuff to unpack regarding the neighbor's condition, which can potentially lead into darker things depending on how cynical one is, but the episode focuses on the two protagonists' on again-off again relationship. 

Although seemingly conventional on the surface, the most alluring thing about Siege Ledesma's First of May is the way in which it presents its story: it first shows us Mon and Ida (Sid Lucero and Annika Dolonius, a reunion of sorts from Apocalypse Child), a couple talking via video call. It then engages in a clever bit of misdirection, with each layer, twist and wrinkle feeding us more character bits and unravelling a larger and more complicated story. In contrast to From My Window, which aimed to depict how the pandemic can keep people apart, this episode depicts how the pandemic can lock people in together, whether they want to or not.

In 1956, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl coined the term Parasocial Interaction to describe the way people interact with personas or celebrities. It's a phenomenon that perhaps gained more prominence during the rise of cinema, radio and television, though arguably it's been a phenomenon from the birth of 'celebrity' itself. In these interactions, people gain a false sense of intimacy or closeness with a public personality, even though this relationship is one-way. The next two episodes explore this concept, mutated and evolved thanks to the advent of streaming, social media, and how pandemic isolation has forced some of us to consume this continually.

Bradley Liew's Eater takes this concept to its extremes. It relates the parasocial relationships we have formed during the pandemic (elevated to dangerous levels) to the act of eating, in particular the activity of Mukbang. To me, there's always been something deeply disturbing about the activity of Mukbang, something that is intended as a communal activity, but something that reads as a disgusting expression of excess consumption. That sense of unease translates well here. But I digress. In a way, the creepy stalker antagonist of Eater has a possessiveness fueled by a twisted drive to connect with someone else. Driven to even further extremes, this episode could have ended with the antagonist wanting to consume or be consumed by his object of obsession, but the film shies away from that at the last minute. 

On the other hand, Rae Red's Year of the Rat approaches this concept in a different, metafictional way, by making us part of the audience on one end of the relationship. Andy (Thea Marabut) is an influencer, making the most of social media and the pandemic by creating inane, shallow content. In fact, stupidity is part of her brand as an influencer, often using the hashtag #tanganation (idiot nation) for the things she makes. The viewer's engagement (meaning, our engagement) may stem from ironic enjoyment, incredulousness, or the kind of fascination one has when seeing a car crash. This leads to a crazy fan using her as a means to gain subscribers of their own. It plays out as one might predict for most of its runtime, but then it throws the audience a marvelously constructed curveball out of nowhere, evoking the words of one Obi Wan Kenobi: who is more foolish, the fool or the fool that follows him?

While the previous two episodes dealt with the horror that we find in other people, the last two episodes deal with a pandemic horror that is less tangible - the impact of increasing isolation on our psyches.

In Dodo Dayao's Destroy Everything You Touch, the zoom conversations between six friends get stranger and more terrifying as their anxieties and neuroses begin to manifest themselves in the real world. The episode gives us a reason for these manifestations, but the effects resonate regardless. It perfectly encapsulates a sense of anxiety, fear and paranoia that lurks in hidden places, just out of sight.

And finally, in Kenneth Dagatan's As You Can See, our "communal isolation," so to say, makes some of us vulnerable to exploitation (in this case, the supernatural kind), especially in the absence of a proper emotional support system. The film's main character Patricia (Beauty Gonzales) is separated from both friends and family, and her boyfriend is a gaslighting creep that doesn't try to understand or care about his girlfriend's situation. She seeks solace in a mother figure (a popular trope in Dagatan's works) but it is part of something sinister and malignant, spreading like a virus in a crowded room.

Now Streaming is available for free until May 4, at Cignal Play.

Present Confusion Reviews | Ride or Die (a.k.a. 彼女; 2021)

 note: spoilers.

At around the end of the first third of Ryuichi Hiroki's Ride or Die, Lovefool by the Cardigans starts to play. The song - the lead single off of the 1996 album First Band on the Moon - reveals its true nature when one looks at the lyrics, which contrast with its bubblegum aesthetic. It's a song about a person desperately struggling to keep someone in their life, whether that other party likes it or not. The song goes:

I don't care if you really care

As long as you don't go

So I cry, I pray, and I beg

Love me, love me

Say that you love me

This isn't a song about longing, Lovefool is a song about a need for codependence on a level that approaches obsession. One may hardly call it love at all - and that's the kind of feeling that embodies Ride or Die, an adaptation of Ching Nakamura's manga Gunjou. Hiroki, with a script penned by Nakamura herself and frequent collaborator Nami Yoshikawa, trims out a lot of the fat from the original manga but keeps the spirit of the manga intact.

The movie begins with a dizzying half hour sequence where Rei Nagasawa (Kiko Mizuhara) kills a married man after a tryst at a bar. This man turns out to be the husband of her former highschool classmate Nanae (Honami Sato). Nanae is the victim of domestic abuse, and Rei takes it upon herself to kill her husband. Before this murder, Rei has lived an otherwise ordinary, even happy life: she lives with her older girlfriend and works as a successful plastic surgeon. But her infatuation with Nanae, something that has continued from her high school days, leads her to throw all that away.

The murder serves as the bloody exclamation point to an extended, explicit sex scene between Rei and her victim. For people who know Kiko Mizuhara through, say, her guesting stint on Queer Eye, the proceedings may be a bit shocking, to say the least. Hiroki is no stranger to scenes like this in his movies; before moving to the mainstream, he worked as a director in pinku eiga in a variety of subgenres such as S&M, and was even one of the early pioneers of the sub subgenre of gay themed pinku eiga. But to call the film's scenes sexploitation is in my opinion, unfair; in my opinion all such scenes in this film serve as subversion and don't read as titillating at all. Hiroki's work isn't shy about sex or sexuality, but he also manages to craft emotionally complex characters (especially women) whose motivations lie in a large morally gray area.

Perhaps one of the biggest moments of this subversion of the male lens is in the subsequent bathroom scene, where both Rei and Nanae strip off their clothes, the former does so to wash off the blood off her body, and the latter to show the bruises and wounds she has gained over the years. The camera lingers over their bodies in a panning shot which wouldn't be unusual in a gravure video, but here the desired effect is unsettling, framing their bodies as canvasses of violence. At the same time, the scene serves as a moment of extreme vulnerability for both women. The confrontation that follows is probably one of the best acted moments of the film, an amazing performance from Mizuhara, who has flown under the radar with her movie roles in the past few years, and Sato, who is perhaps better known as the drummer for indie rock band Gesu no Kiwami Otome.

The relationship between Rei and Nanae isn't a romance in the normal sense, if it could be called love at all: although it is a bit more ambiguous in the film, Nanae in the manga is straight, and cannot reciprocate Rei's affection, at least in the way Rei wants. Whatever kindness Rei gives her is rebuffed or met with aloofness or hostility, because due to her history and self-loathing, she is unable to process the love she receives. Rei desires Nanae, and would do anything for her sake, but this love is unrequited. She is also troubled by a sense of insecurity and inadequacy. Like in Lovefool, she is consumed by a desire for codependence that she cannot shake off. Perhaps it is better to say that they need each other rather than love each other, and that they often cope with that neediness in self-destructive ways. For Rei, it manifests as a moment where she engages in casual sex with another man, a moment that serves more as an act of self harm than an act done for her own satisfaction.

These are two strangers that, in the words of the manga, are neither lovers nor friends. The nature of their relationship can be seen as transactional: one offering services to the other in exchange for something else. The journey that the film takes us through oscillates between tender moments of gentle reflection and table-turning hysterics. But by the end of the film, this relationship evolves when both Nanae and Rei consummate their bottled up feelings and come into a twisted sort of understanding: that sometimes, when all we have left is each other, that's all we really ever need.

Unifying Japan for Fun and Profit

 

What!? A video game entry in a movie review blog!?

Yeah, I'm diversifying (again). I just want to talk to the void about this.

To lessen my time playing the insanely addicting gacha hellhole that is Genshin Impact, I've decided to take up another video game, a "part time" game to lessen the crushing existential dread that's been in ample supply recently. The game of choice was Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, a cross between Koei's kingdom simulation games and a Samurai Warriors game. The latter is itself a spinoff of Koei's popular Dynasty Warriors series, where historical figures fight large scale battles against hundreds or thousands of enemies with over the top weapons and sometimes even magic. However, the Samurai Warriors series is more than just "Dynasty Warriors but Japan," it's a lot more tactically diverse and the gameplay has diverged quite a bit from its parent game. It has its faults, yes (it skims over some controversial parts of history, understandably so, and its gameplay loop can prove to be tedious for some) but it has developed its own niche following.

In Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, you are put in charge of one of several clans (based on Japanese history) with the ultimate aim of conquering everyone else and unifying Japan under your rule. You fight battles, defend your territory, recruit new generals to fight for you and manage your domain's economy. To the right kind of person, this kind of game is very fun, and I'm exactly that kind of person.

The map of Feudal Japan that you have to work with. Each territory is controlled by a clan, indicated by the flag.

By the third playthrough (a single playthrough on normal difficulty lasts around 9-12 hours), I decided to play the Sanada clan, which featured the Samurai Warriors series' poster boy, Yukimura Sanada. The starting territory is right in the middle of Japan, surrounded by hostile clans. I tried to make alliances at the start so that I wouldn't be attacked constantly, but few clans responded to my offers of alliance. I won each battle by the skin of my teeth; in one battle in which I invaded a territory despite being horribly outnumbered, I won with just 9 seconds remaining on the clock (running out of time means you lose, and you fail to capture that territory).

Eventually my economy started to pick up and my kingdom wasn't running on fumes anymore. To protect myself from the western clans, I struck up an alliance with a clan next to me, creating a barrier and preventing other western clans from invading as I began to conquer the east. In the meantime another clan, the Shimazu, were getting busy conquering the western half of Japan. A showdown was inevitable.

One of the most troublesome enemies I had to deal with in East Japan was the Tokugawa clan, whose defense and troops were, at this point of the game, top tier. One general in particular, Tadakatsu Honda, was a big source of most of my problems, as he is the strongest character in the game. (Historically the man was a badass too.) While the Shimazu were conquering domains left and right, I had to ally with eastern clans (that I would later betray) just to defend myself against the Tokugawa. By the time I was done with the Tokugawa, limping and injured, the Shimazu had time to recuperate and organize their troops. 

After finally uniting East Japan, incurring a number of losses to my own troops, I thought I had some time to rest and recover. That was, alas, only a pipe dream because in the next turn, the Shimazu had conquered my western ally, and were rearing up for an invasion of my territory. When they struck, I was still depleted and my attempts to defend my westernmost domains were feeble at best. I managed to regain my lost territory, but my men were dwindling. Thankfully I had a secret weapon: Tadakatsu Honda, the man that frustrated my attempts to put down the Tokugawa clan earlier. After the defeat of that clan, Honda found himself in my service as I had to recruit people to bolster my forces.

The battle between east and west began and I took my sweet time. With each victory I crept closer and closer until finally I had cornered the Shimazu to their last domain and won handily. A united Japan at last. It may not be a game to the level of immersive AAA masterpieces, but a fun gameplay loop and the ability to make a story by yourself through gameplay (like what I've done so far) is something that I value in my games. Some games want you to go on a predestined track, which is sometimes okay, but the ability to create your own (meta)narrative is something not a lot of games have.

So that's about it. Sorry you had to endure all that.

Oh, one more thing.

In this game, your playable characters or generals have the ability to form relationships with each other, either as friends, rivals, mentor-students, and in the case of female and male characters, as husbands or wives. There's a way in-game, once the correct things have been unlocked, to create your own cutscene where two generals marry each other in a solemn ceremony.

The marriage scene looks like this.

There are rules, however, but I don't know if they thought this through. Males and females only, which should disappoint some shippers. You also can't put as husband and wife two characters that are historically father and daughter (Mitsuhide Akechi can't be married to Gracia, and Tadakatsu Honda can't be married to Inahime, for example). But brothers and sisters? Mothers and sons? Apparently it's fair game. That's just weird.

Thoughts on Dito at Doon

Compared to other major historical disasters of the past century, this pandemic feels like a catastrophe unfolding in super slow motion, where we are all ripped from our former lives and placed into a situation that is for all intents and purposes, out of our control. In such a situation, wouldn't it be logical to want someone to hold your hand while you watch the world die? 

There is a sense of longing in JP Habac's Dito at Doon, a sense of wanting to live a way of life that no longer exists. It is deeply felt in the film's form, especially in the way it frames online conversations. It rejects the "zoom aesthetic" pioneered by productions created during the early months of the pandemic, instead opting to depict these online meetings as in-person conversations. This framing gives the goings on a sense of intimacy that wouldn't have registered as well if it was filmed as two people staring at each other through a screen. Its romantic tropes and clichés even evoke pre-pandemic romantic films, treading very familiar ground in that respect.

And that thought leads to the tragedy at the core of this film: no matter how much we try to escape with someone else into fantasies of comfort, it is slowly getting harder to avoid the reality that this is not going away. Something was lost when we all retreated into our homes, and that thing is something people struggle to reclaim. Whatever aspirations we have towards love take a back seat to responsibilities towards family and ultimately, one's own survival. To me, Dito at Doon isn't a romance, it's a disaster movie: a movie that takes place in a world where the soil where romance grows is barren.

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

 

It's a Hollywood tale as old as time: an ambitious filmmaker with a grand idea comes to tinseltown with a plan. Almost immediately, executives meddle with that creative vision, leading to a frankensteined product that does not resemble the original idea in any way. Audiences who see the potential of that idea are left with an unsatisfying work of art, wondering what could have been.

What would an Edgar Wright Ant-Man look like? Or a Lord and Miller Solo? Or a purely Josh Trank Fant4stic? We will probably never see the answers to such questions, and that's how it goes in Hollywood. That's why the recently released recut of Justice League, directed by Zack Snyder, is something of an aberration. After fan backlash to the original 2017 film, clamor for a rumored "Snyder Cut" grew until Warner Brothers gave up the ghost and gave the fans what they wanted.

I'm not going to spend the next few paragraphs talking about the lore or the characters in a grander context; many fan-run sites will be able to articulate it better than I ever can. What I can tell you here is, in terms of cinema, what does something like this film mean?

This four hour monstrosity is remarkable. It is a film, but it has aspects that can be seen more in arthouse films than in your usual Hollywood blockbuster. With its runtime, it flouts the rules of commercial cinema, and by chance it is uniquely suited to take advantage of the streaming medium that has supplanted traditional theaters during the pandemic.

That's not to say the film is perfect. It's not God's gift to cinema, no, but it doesn't want to be. It is, however, a vast improvement over the original film, and it's safe to say that any newcomers should avoid the original film entirely and consider this the definitive version.

Despite the many changes, at its core the story is still the same: after Superman's death in the previous film, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) begin assembling some of Earth's mightiest heroes to fend off an alien invasion. What sets both films apart is, first and foremost, a consistency in tone. Gone are the MCU quips that wormed their way into the 2017 version thanks to Joss Whedon's involvement. That is perhaps this cut's best feature: the Snyder Cut isn't trying to be something else, it is its own thing. We get to know the characters first (something that is no doubt alleviated by the releases of 2017's Wonder Woman and 2018's Aquaman) and the stakes are clear. Even the villain, a cartoonishly stock villain in the 2017 film, is given a backstory and motivation in this one.

While it does still suffer from being the follow-up to a mediocre, if a bit silly movie, and it suffers from Snyder's own, sometimes overindulgent filmmaking weaknesses, and it still does at least three movies' worth of heavy lifting, the end result is entertaining in its own, chaotic way.

This film does raise a number of interesting questions. It's probably safe to say that this version of the film would not be the version that Snyder would release theatrically had he still continued making the 2017 film. He was unconstrained by cinema rules or distributors or running times. What if, in the context of traditional cinemas dying, this film is part of a new paradigm in film production moving forward? What does the Snyder Cut say about fan driven efforts? How heavily will fan clamor change how a movie is made creatively? While it worked for this film (giving Snyder free reign to do what he wants), studios reacting to fan demand also has its downsides - see the last Star Wars movie for an example of that. 

One can comfortably end the film at the 3 hour 40 minute mark and call it a day. What follows after that mark is an epilogue that shows audiences what a Snyderverse film would have looked like. In a meta sense, it reflects itself: the epilogue that consists of a dream of an alternate universe, is itself a look into an alternate universe - one where Zack Snyder continued working on future Justice League films. But in the here and now, reality is different: WB has shifted to telling more standalone stories with the release of films like 2019's Joker, and it's doubtful whether actors like Ray Fisher (Cyborg) or Amber Heard (Mera) will return. The epilogue, then, feels a tad cruel, a tease for a sequel that will never come.

But people were saying only a few years back that this cut will never, ever be a thing, and look where we are now. The possibilities are endless.

Present Confusion 2020 Rundown Part 3: World Cinema Favorites

 

...I've run out of jokes

It's a bit ironic that when the pandemic forced us all into our homes, it allowed cinema to expand beyond borders at the same time. International film festivals started offering their films to international audiences, sometimes for free. The world became a smaller place.

In rough order, here are some of my favorite films from around the world that I saw in 2020.

John Tawasil's

WORLD CINEMA FAVORITES 2020

Honorable Mentions:

15. Exit (Lee Sang-geun, 2019) - An enjoyable thrill ride from start to finish, while Exit isn't as profound as other films in this list, it's by far one of the most entertaining. At a time where the world wasn't looking too sunny, it was the injection of stubborn, boldfaced positivity that I needed. 

14. The Half of It (Alice Wu, 2020) - This refreshing take on Cyrano de Bergerac intersects queer love, friendship, immigrant integration into society and religion and culture in a small town all in one surprisingly wholesome package. Where's the other half of it, Netflix?

13 My Sweet Grappa Remedies (Akiko Ohku, 2019) - I've always associated "coming of middle age films" with anxious, chaotic and even violent awakenings. Akiko Ohku's My Sweet Grappa Remedies takes the opposite approach, gently easing us into a woman's entrance into that strange realm between youth and old age.

12. Under the Open Sky (Miwa Nishikawa) - Miwa Nishikawa has a penchant for stories featuring characters who employ deception, and this absorbing character study is no exception - except this time, the only thing the main character of Under the Open Sky is truly deceiving is himself.

ELEVEN WORLD CINEMA FAVORITES

11. True Mothers (Naomi Kawase, 2020) - It seems like Naomi Kawase has gone full circle: from deeply personal documentaries about how motherhood has shaped her, she's made an emotional exploration of motherhood in all its myriad forms. Also, I'm a fan of Kawase's work and I hope she gets to make more films like this in the future.

10. You and I (Fanny Chotimah, 2020) - few films are as heartbreaking as Fanny Chotimah's debut work about the twilight years of two political dissidents who find each other during their incarceration and grow old together. An intersection of the sociopolitical effects of activism on one's life, a "love" story unlike any other, and a gentle meditation on the finite nature of life, it's hard to type words about this film without breaking into tears. It's that affecting.

9. Corpus Christi (Jan Komasa, 2019) - I guess it's pretty telling that this film about an ex-con/juvenile delinquent pretending to be a priest communicates true Christlike behavior better than any faith based film that I've ever seen in my life.

8. Eeb Allay Ooo! (Prateek Vats, 2019) - hierarchies dominate the theme of Prateek Vats' debut film, and it's pretty telling that in these ladders of social order, ordinary humans like you and me aren't necessarily at the top.

7. Minari (Lee Isaac Chung, 2020) - a tender drama about an immigrant family trying to make it in the rural United States, Minari is a film about the smaller stories that make up the tapestry of a proud nation of immigrants.

6. Nomadland (Chloe Zhao, 2020) - It's kind of interesting that in a year where loneliness is forced upon us by circumstance, there's a film like Nomadland, about a person whose loneliness exists by choice. There's also a sense of larger machinations with economies and society trickling down and destroying the underlying fabric of America, scattering its peoples into empty wastelands, perpetually exiled from each other.

5. Nasir (Arun Karthick, 2020) - 2020 marks a year where the inherent weaknesses of populism were laid bare by the pandemic. A person can think critically; while masses of people are prone to manipulation, and their hatred can be directed against others. In an environment where hate is cultivated day by day, it is always the everyday man who suffers the most. In this adaptation of a short story (itself based on real life events), the humdrum day of a man is shown in gentle detail, before hurtling towards an inevitable, unfortunate conclusion.

4. Quo Vadis, Aida? (Jasmila Žbanić, 2020) - as with Nasir, Quo Vadis, Aida deals with the monstrous consequences of hate and the inevitability of history. But it also deals with the banality of evil, in that normal people - your neighbor, your coworker, even yourself - can be capable of heinous things. What place does accountability have, then, in a society trying to move past such a difficult history?

3. Crazy World (Nabwana IGG, 2019) - I saw this rerelease of the 2014 Wakaliwood classic during the height of the pandemic, during the We Are One global film festival - and I think it's exactly what I needed. While far from perfect technically, it's as crazy as the title says - a wild, inventive (and surprisingly, lesson-filled) love letter to cinema, and I'm all for it.

2. A Balance (Yujiro Harumoto, 2020) - This is actually my favorite film of 2020, as the #1 is there for mostly sentimental reasons. Harumoto's debut film, a meditation on media, truth, and truth-telling, is the most tense 153 minutes I have watched this entire year. 

1. Happy Old Year (Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2019) - as we throw away the garbage of the previous year, I guess it's appropriate that the film at the top of this list deals with throwing things away, and the idea that that process is never that simple. As with many of Nawapol's films, this particular film feels low key, almost deadpan, then does a 180 turn and shoots you straight in the heart.

***

That ends Present Confusion for 2020. To be honest, guys and gals, I legitimately thought of hanging up my gloves at the end of 2019, but the pandemic gave me room to stretch creatively. With the way things are going now, I don't think I can go back to cinemas yet. So unless I've been vaccinated, I've decided not to cover any Filipino films with a purely theatrical release..

That said, the format of this blog will likely change in the coming months. I'll probably start talking about different things, if I ever find the juice to talk about anything at all. For all we know, this might be my last entry in Present Confusion, and if that's the case, with 15 years of stuff behind us, I think this is a good place to end it. But if I do manage to think of something to write about, expect it here and nowhere else.

In the meantime, I'll still be working with the fine folks over at Third World Cinema Club, and I have a youtube channel now. That might go on for a while until I run out of ideas again and make my way back here.

In years past, I've ended these things by saying "see you at the movies," but since this time things are different, I'll settle with saying: Be safe. Take care of yourself. And if the fates are kind, I'll see you around.

Present Confusion 2020 Rundown Part 2: Philippine Cinema Odds and Ends

 

the B in this BL probably means something else

The comic sans font doesn't really justify this piece. This piece isn't all about bad films since in this space I want to talk about interesting films too. Because film production in the country came to a halt, there weren't a lot of bad films. And no, your one star review of some popular movie that's actually not that bad doesn't count. That doesn't mean, however, that no bad films came out this year. 

This doesn't have much of a structure, either, and it's not in list form. I guess you'll just have to read through.

Blade Entertainment, the entertainment wing of the ubiquitous seller of car paraphernalia and knick knacks of the same name, is perhaps the last place where you'd expect a diamond in the rough. And that sentiment is at least kind of right; Ara Baldonado's Good Times Bad isn't exactly top of the year material, but it sure did leave an impression on me. 

There isn't exactly a lot of plot to hold the film together; it's about two people, complete strangers, who try to find stolen items that hold sentimental value to them. The entire film is about them trying to do just that.

The film has a lot of filler; the film tends to drag out some of its sequences, and the film also includes a number of strange additions, such as a cameo from Akihiro Blanco, reprising his character from Blade Entertainment movies 12 Days to Destiny and The Next 12 Days. But the film is structured so weirdly that it feels like an experimental film sometimes: there's a time loop in the middle of the film. There are various monologues about the mysteries of life, delivered as if in a drug induced haze, scattered all throughout the story. At points it was so delightfully weird that I was compelled to keep watching. It's probably one of the most surprising local movie experiences of the year.

For people talking about their favorite films this year, remember this experimental short disguised as an IG live? This almost kinda made it, but to be honest the conversation that followed was far more interesting than the film itself. Imagine being a little angry because you felt duped by a film, when the very idea of a love team is in itself a manufactured construct?

One of the most wild experiences of my 2020 moviegoing experience has to be Noriel Jarito's Huramentado: Kill The President. Yes, THAT president, but you don't get to see the act on screen (you don't even see if he's successful or not!). The Samar-based Jarito has made one other major film before (starring himself!) called Rindido, which can be viewed on his Youtube channel.

Long story short, this movie is bonkers. I almost contemplated making a (non) review of this film in the spirit of classics like Durugin ang Droga and Exit Point, but I simply didn't have the time. Maybe someday. The entire first 10-15 minutes is basically footage from an actual CineLokal premiere edited to look like an assassination is about to take place. All fine and good, until you realize that intercut with these scenes are seemingly accidental clips of some middle aged guy in his boxers lying in bed. I wish I could tell you I was joking.

Jarito seems to want to say something with his film, and you can palpably feel a seething sense of distrust towards corruption and a hatred of establishment politics and feudal rule in the provinces. Points for effort for that. I hope the film gets shown on youtube again so you can all see it in its crazy glory.

I've already said my piece about Pakboys Takusa, and I won't waste my time talking about that. They had a prime chance to screen a hentai at the MMFF and all we get are the ugly bastards. Just kidding. Or am I?

Pakboys the Animation (2021)

But there is one other film that I intensely disliked in 2020, and that's Oligase: The Demon of Fear. I dislike it because while (I think) it means well, and its disparate elements mean well, it's all in all a miserable affair that does nothing except paint indigenous peoples as backwards-thinking, histrionic morons. 

It's all in there: the stock religious masochistic suffering-to-redemption narrative, the devaluing of education, the devaluing of indigenous peoples, the weird colonialist undertones, the amount of sexual violence just for the sake of it. In a year where a film like Tokwifi gained mainstream recognition, this is just a giant leap backward.

***

That's about it for local cinema in 2020. Anyway, stay tuned for my favorite picks from international cinema.