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Biyaheng langit (2000)
Bet Your Life On It
"Biyaheng Langit" tells the story of Bea, a young Filipino-American (Joyce Jimenez). Bea is bored; all she wants in life is to raise five thousand dollars so that she can live independently in the United States. To relieve her boredom, Bea follows her grandmother (Nida Blanca) to the casino, where they gamble all night; this is where she meets Danny (Mark Anthony Fernandez), a runner who collects money from the tables for Bosing (Bembol Roco).
Gambling--the act of putting what you have at stake, in the hope of winning more--is the underlying theme of "Biyaheng Langit;" as Bea's grandmother puts it "I gamble to console myself, to keep from feeling lonely." Bea feels the same; that's why she has a one-night stand with Danny, and that's why she persuades Danny to join her in her less-than-brilliant plan, to pour their life's savings into a one-night run at the tables, in the hope of winning big.
Instead, they lose big, and have to run for their lives. Danny takes Bea home, to a squalid collection of shanties propped up besides the city's railways; here Bea learns of another kind of gambling, the gamble of the urban poor. Of people whose entire lives are put at stake without their ever asking for it, who either take years to die of malnutrition or are killed in a careless instant by an oncoming train. Taking risks is more than a recreation for them, it's a way of life--yet they still have to wear the same poker face, still have to put on the same brave, desperately defiant front as any card holder at the tables. More, they still manage to care for each other--"Auntie" (Vangie Labalan) and Solomon (RJ Leyran) both look out for Danny, who is an orphaned loner that the community has unofficially adopted; Danny in turn looks out for "Tenga" (Christian Alvear), an up-and-coming child pickpocket. Bea learns that even in hopeless circumstances human warmth and caring is possible; she learns that even here love is somehow possible.
The "hell" of a bad losing streak in the luxurious "heaven" luxury of a casino; the "heaven" of camaraderie and compassion in the "hell" of a squatter community--doesn't sound very gratuitous, does it? Granted, the theme is melodramatic and hardly fresh...but it's one to which the film's writers--Aguiluz, his film editor Mirana Bhunjun, writer Yanco de la Cruz, and novelist Rey Ventura--lend their talents and more, their conviction and passion.
Ventura in particular is key to the film's script; he began his career writing cheap romance novels, and he knows the value of old, melodramatic themes; he knows that people are quick to recognize them, and he knows that despite today's cynicism and postmodernist posturing, people still believe in them. Today Ventura is better known as the writer of "Underground in Japan," a novel chronicling his real-life experiences as an illegal immigrant in Japan. The book was praised by The Village Voice and, in an article in Asiaweek magazine, by Donald Ritchie, legendary film critic of Japanese cinema--yet essentially Ventura is still doing the same thing he did in his cheap romances: writing about love and loss, life and struggle. The difference between the romances and "Underground," however, is the strong material; the difference between "Biyaheng Langit" and practically any other Filipino melodrama today is the film's realistic and detailed texture (all four writers have made documentary films), and its often high level of acting.
Aguiluz always brings out the best in his actors; I remember Ronnie Lazaro's relentlessly ambitious "torero" in "Boatman," or Albert Martinez's humane and humanly frail Rizal in "Rizal sa Dapitan" (Rizal in Dapitan). I remember Helen Gamboa, playing the definitive Flor Contemplacion in "Bagong Bayani" (The Last Wish"--one of the best performances by a Filipina actress I've ever seen in the nineties. The actors in "Biyaheng Langit" are consistently good--Vangie Labalan as the matronly "Auntie;" Alvear as the spirited "Tenga;" RJ Leyran as the "wise" Solomon, Danny's best friend; John Arcilla as a treacherous henchman; Bembol Roco as the repellent "Bosing." Joyce Jimenez in the crucial role of Bea is adequate (with her clothes off, she's more than adequate)--but the film really belongs to Mark Anthony Fernandez, as Danny. Coming off a hard period of rehabilitation for drug abuse, Fernandez has lost all his baby fat and looks startlingly leaner, more predatory; at the same time he has the charisma and forcefulness to take his place as the film's ambiguous hero. His Danny is a fascinating mix of contradictions--smart and quick on his feet, yet not too smart that he doesn't fall for Bea's charms; unbendingly loyal to Bosing but when Bosing betrays him he doesn't hesitate to fight back, with a volatility, an anger that this actor simply wasn't capable of a few years ago.
A final note: it's ironic that the MTRCB's delaying tactics (What were they for, anyway--a swipe at Viva Studios? At Aguiluz, who has never been popular with the-powers-that-be?) has resulted in the film's gaining extra relevance, in that its portrait of money flowing from the gambling tables--from the most luxurious casinos to the humblest shanty--reflects the recent gambling-and-corruption scandal brewing in the Estrada administration. But Aguiluz has never been a filmmaker to shy away from betting on risky subject matter; this time, God willing, his bet pays off big time.
Bagong bayani (1995)
Bagong Bayani is the best Filipino film since Orapronobis in the late 1980's
Bagong Bayani is the underdog of the two films about Flor Contemplacion: made in two months on a shoestring budget, it's been plagued by unaccountable production delays (due to pressure from Viva, perhaps?), and so far no theater has agreed to release it, so the closest you might get to it is through this review. Which is a filthy shame: Bagong Bayani is the best Filipino film since Orapronobis in the late 1980's. Instead of a career devoted to skin flicks, Aguiluz sharpened his teeth on documentaries. He pours that not inconsiderable experience into this film: parts of actual interviews mix deftly with dramatizations of specific episodes; the outside and inside of Changi prison were filmed with hidden cameras (Aguiluz reportedly dressed as a turbaned Indian to film the prison gates; when a guard spotted him, he literally had to run to save the film footage). From the first frame onwards it's obvious that this is not going to be your usual Carlos J. Caparas massacre flick. Flor Contemplacion (Helen Gamboa) is led, bare-footed, to the gallows; she is followed by a restless camera, seeking her out from every angle--hand-held, tilted, low-angled, panning. The execution itself happens swiftly in a series of shots so fluidly cut they have the smoothness and finality of a hanged man's sperm emission. The film shifts back to Flor's interrogation: she is forced to stand for hours, deprived of food and water, while the CID officer (an intensely convincing Pen Medina) strikes her. I was told that this was the first time Helen Gamboa gave a real performance. If so, it was worth the wait; Gamboa is riveting as she shows us the final stages of exhaustion without resorting to the standard excess hysterics of Filipino acting. It's said that Chanda Romero wants to sue this film, because the part of Flor was promised to her. But her performance as Delia Maga is no disappointment. She's always been an extremely talented actress, and her acting has never felt more honest and open than here. The scene where she discovers her ward drowned is especially fine: having a good idea as to what her employer might do to her, she picks up the phone and literally has to force herself to call him; you can see the terror in her trembling hands. But her best moments are spent with her fellow actress. Romero and Gamboa establish an easy but close rapport; we sense the loneliness that draws them together. The fact that their employers allow them to see each other about once a week only strengthens the tie. Aguiluz underlines the enforced isolation by showing us Flor's room: a tiny cubicle nearly filled up by a single cot, where a hi-tech TV set that must have cost a month's wages has to sit on the room's one folding chair. Flor, in being convicted, had only exchanged one prison for another, a living death for a real death. One shot actually illustrates this visually: as Flor climbs the apartment stairs to meet Delia Maga for the last time, the camera follows her past darkened corridors and bright windows as if she was fading in and out, her existence uncertain. One of the film's finest sequences takes place inside Changi prison, where Flor meets Virginia Parumog. Their early scenes have a deliciously tentative feel, as Virginia tries to draw Flor out of her torture-and-drug-induced shell, and their friendship begins to firm. I have rarely seen acting--Filipino acting--as delicately played as this. As examples of female bonding, these short scenes (plus those between Flor and Delia) put the more expensive and supposedly more talented cast of Little Women to shame. Irma Adlawan as Virginia gives an astonishing performance: warm, intelligent, deeply compassionate. She senses Flor's enormous need, and her strength and sympathy grow to match that need. In one scene, Virginia reads a note smuggled to her by Flor. While Gamboa narrates Flor's suffering, Adlawan suggests--by the inwardness of her crouch, the bend of her neck--how deeply she feels Flor's words. Aguiluz clothes her in shadows, implying Virginia's total immersion in Flor's state of mind, a state of near-total despair. It's a tribute to the director and both actresses that with the simplest of devicesa crouched posture, a bit of darkness, and a voice-over--they bring us totally inside the souls of these two women. It's instructive to see how The Flor Contemplacion Story and Bagong Bayani stage identical scenes: when the children visit their mother in Flor, Lamangan plunks a glass sheet wide as a panoramic movie screen between them, the better to see Nora act; Aguiluz chooses verisimilitude, using a cramped little barred window. This effectively forces the children to contort uncomfortably to see her face, making you think: they aren't even allowed a good look at their mother. In Flor, Lamangan forces Nora to dominate the scenes; in Bayani, Aguiluz has them talk as normal people in their situation talk: greetings first, then important business, then small talk, then despairing silence. The progression happens quietly and naturally; finally Flor and her children are reduced to pressing their palms to each other through the glass. The mix of dramatization and documentary recalls The Thin Blue Line, about the arrest and conviction of an innocent man for murder. Line attempted to deconstruct events, repeating them over and over again until you see the contradictions in the prosecution's case against the accused; Bayani assumes Flor's innocence, giving the Singaporean version only a token glance. It might have helped Bayani's case to adopt a more objective tone, giving time to both sides (but then, we wouldn't have all these wonderful performances). As it is, Bayani doesn't seem concerned with the question of guilt so much as with depicting Flor's life, at which it succeeds, vividly. The use of documentary footage broadens the implications of her story, turning it into the story of all OCWs abroad. From The Manila Chronicle, June 95
Tatarin (2001)
The Best Film in the 2001 Metro Manila Film Festival
There are at least three entries in the 2001 Metro Manila Film Festival that seem meant to be taken as actual quality fare: Tikoy Aguiluz's "Tatarin" (Summer Solstice); Joel Lamangan's "Hubog" (A Woman's Curve), and Marilou Diaz Abaya's "Bagong Buwan" (The New Moon).
The standout by far among the three, I think, is Tikoy Aguiluz's "Tatarin." Based on Nick Joaquin's play "Summer Solstice," the film is about the oldest and longest-running war known to man, the war between the sexes. Joaquin's problem then was how to make this war relevant again to jaded audiences (the play was written in 1975); his solution was to set the play in the 1920s, when male-dominated Western Culture was just beginning to tremble. Aguiluz's adoption of Joaquin's stratagem is, I think, a smart move--this way he captures the very roots of the war (or at least of the 20th century edition of the war) as waged by our grandparents and great-grandparents; he photographs the combatants at a time when the battle is still urgent and raw, the stakes desperately high.
And the battle lines are drawn, of course, around a married coupleDon Paeng and Dona Lupe Moreta (Edu Manzano and Dina Bonnevie), on the evening of the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist, on the third night of the "Tatarin"--a pagan ritual where for three days out of the year women hold ascendancy over men.
I can't think of a better Filipino filmmaker than Aguiluz to evoke the living past--especially in a production like this, where immersion in a long-gone age is crucial to the success of the film. Combining the considerable resources of Viva Studios (which are usually poured into banal glamour productions) with his keen documentary filmmaker's eye, Aguiluz (with the help of production designer Dez Bautista) evokes the remarkably authentic, miraculously detailed world of the Moretas--from the flour mill that produces their dried noodles, to the 1920s-style kitchen hard at work on dinner, to the luxuriously appointed family mansions with their incredible painted ceilings. And it's not just a matter of having an enormous production budget; it's the intelligence to pick out this particular detail, the wit to shoot from that particular angle--then the judiciousness to cut it all up so that you only glance at the images, and are left wanting more.
But more than the ability to recreate a historical period, Aguiluz (again, with the help of writer Ricky Lee and editor Mirana Medina) is able to streamline Joaquin's play, to focus on the struggle between Don Paeng and Dona Lupe. The three have tinkered with Joaquin's married couple, made delicate adjustments, crucial revisions--the Moretas, for one, have lost all warmth and affection for each other, where in the play they still show signs of tenderness. Don Paeng has become a psychologically immobile, sexually impotent monster (kudos to Edu Manzano for the courage to portray such a thoroughly unlikable man) while Dona Lupe (Dina Bonnevie, in possibly the performance of her career) has become more submissive, more withdrawn (the better to highlight the climactic reversal when it comes).
Then there is the dialogue, which has been pruned, made less explicit, made more functional than decorative. Besides the careful pruning, Aguiluz manages to locate the drama in the moments when words are not spoken--through shots that encapsulate in a single image the tension of the scene, like the one where Dona Lupe's foot is kissed by Guido (Carlos Morales), with Don Paeng watching from the balcony. Don Paeng, the shot says to us, is ascendant by virtue of his standing in the balcony, but is also rendered remote and helpless by the distance.
Then the "Tatarin" ritual itself. Moved offstage in the play, the ritual occupies center stage in the film: a wordless, ten-minute orgy of pulsing drumbeat, flaring torches and convulsing women. Aguiluz wanted the sense of a real location turned theater set, and he got it--the dance, staged at the foot of an actual balete tree, feels nightmarish, surreal. And obscene--though nudity is at a minimum, there is no lack of lewdness to the drumming and dancing, which at times is reduced to frank rutting. "Pagan" is a polite and inadequate term for what happens at the foot of the balete tree.
"Tatarin" feels more lighthearted than Aguiluz's earlier works, if only because he doesn't end the film with a life-or-death situation (meaning: the protagonist didn't die). More, it's the first really comic film Aguiluz has ever directed, and he handles the material with admirable lightness and vigor. One of the best Filipino films of the year, and my vote for best of the festival, hands down.