Tag: Philippines

Sunshine (Antoinette Jadaone, 2024)

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“Don’t drag me into this,” a boy says after hearing that his girlfriend is pregnant, having already questioned if the baby’s really his. Miggy signals his lack of responsibility by directly asking Sunshine what “her” plan is, making it plain that she’s on her own and he does not see himself playing an active role in a predicament he essentially sees as nothing to do with him. Aside from Miggy’s father Jaime, who happens to be a protestant pastor, men are largely absent from Antoinette Jadaone’s Sunshine and even when they appear rigid figures of patriarchal control. 

Sunshine implies that she’s only in this mess because Miggy pressured her into unprotected sex, but she’s left to deal with the fallout on her own. Still in school, she’s about to take her last shot at getting onto the Olympic rhythmic gymnastic team but risks losing everything she’s worked so hard for if her pregnancy is discovered. Even when she goes to buy a pregnancy test, she’s asked for ID and judged by the woman behind the counter while it’s otherwise true that abortion is illegal in all circumstances in the Philippines, meaning Sunshine’s only options are finding and paying a wise woman for medicine to provoke a miscarriage. 

It’s the reactions of other women that Sunshine most fears from her otherwise supportive coach, whose ambitions also rest on her performance, to her best friend who does in fact shun her on her mother’s insistence, and her older sister who is caring for the whole family and seems to be a single mother herself having had a baby at a young age. Like a grim siren, Sunshine’s niece won’t stop crying as if echoing the alarm of her impending maternity and her own discomfort with it. It’s a network of women that she turns to for solutions if not for advice. There’s no one Sunshine can ask for that, because what she’s looking for is illegal. All she can do is stand outside the church and pray that God take mercy on her by allowing her to wake up from this nightmare. There’s something quite ironic when she’s told to ask forgiveness from God “the father” by a religious and judgemental female doctor as if laying bare the patriarchal and oppressive underpinnings of the entire society. 

Yet cast onto a surreal odyssey through Manila in search of solutions, Sunshine finds herself becoming the supportive presence she herself doesn’t have. While pursued by a very judgmental little girl who echoes her inner confusion by branding her a “murderer” and questions her decision making, Sunshine is approached by another little girl who appears to be heavily pregnant and is begging for money to see a faith healer whom she hopes will help her end her pregnancy. Despite her own experience, Sunshine asks her why she doesn’t ask her boyfriend for help but the girl explains that he’s not her boyfriend, he’s her uncle, so she’s even more powerless and alone than Sunshine is. No one’s going to do anything about the Uncle Bobots of the world, but they’re only too happy to criminalise and abandon a little with no one else to turn to. 

Realising that the girl was trying to abort her child, the male doctor at the hospital refuses to treat her knowing full well there is a possibility she may die. Only a sympathetic female doctor is later willing to help. Sunshine too almost dies after her first attempt at taking an abortion pill which she does all alone at a love hotel where the woman on the counter didn’t want to give her a room because people who go to hotels on their own are a high risk for suicide. When she does eventually find out, Sunshine’s sister is actually sympathetic and stands up to Jaime on her behalf when he makes a bid to take over her life and force her into maternity by getting Miggy to apologise and unconvincingly insist that he actually loves her and their baby while leveraging his wealth and privilege against her by recommending that she be cared for by his family doctor and the best hospitals at his expense. It does however provoke a degree of clarity in Sunshine’s insistence that she doesn’t want to be a mother and has no intention of becoming one while rediscovering herself in rhythmic gymnastics and making peace with her younger self. A sometimes bleak picture of young womanhood in the contemporary Philippines, the film nevertheless finds relief in pockets of female solidarity and the conviction that it doesn’t have to be this way for the younger generation who should be free to pursue their dreams and make their own choices about what they do with their bodies.

Sunshine screens April 26 & 30 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase.

Manila by Night (Ishmael Bernal, 1980)

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Contemporary youth is swallowed by the darkness of the Marcos-era capital in Ishmael Bernal’s meandering nocturnal epic, Manila by Night. So bleak was its vision that it was blocked from release by first lady Imelda Marcos who objected to the film’s characterisation of her beloved city and insisted that all references to Manila be removed which is why the film was retitled City After Dark in an attempt to distance itself from the realities of urban life under the authoritarian regime. 

Bernal opens however with a scene of aspirational suburban living at the home of a wealthy family as they prepare for an evening out attending a live gig by eldest son Alex (William Martinez), an aspiring folk singer. In a quiet city bar he performs a wholesome cover of the ’69 Crosby, Stills & Nash classic “Teach Your Children”, but the otherwise serene atmosphere is abruptly shattered by gunshots ending the performance and scattering the spectators. The choice of song is in itself instructive in hinting at the generational divide between the apathetic Alex and his respectable middle-class suburban mother Virgie (Charito Solis) who we later discover is carrying a degree of shame over her past as a sex worker and has perhaps overcompensated in her desire to ensure her children become successful members of a conservative society. 

As the song says, Alex too is incapable of understanding his parents’ youthful suffering and finds himself lost in the nighttime city. On the one hand he’s dating a young woman of a similar social class who may be joking when she talks about their marriage but is evidently more serious about the relationship than he is while they retreat to a hotel room experimenting with sex and drugs. On the other hand he’s also experimenting with a gay man, Manay (Bernardo Bernardo), who is also in an awkward relationship with bisexual taxi driver Pebrero (Orestes Ojeda) who has two children and a wife while simultaneously dating naive and innocent country girl Baby (Lorna Tolentino ) currently working as a waitress at a diner where a sleazy pimp keeps hassling her to become a sex worker promising megabucks from wealthy Japanese clients. 

The presence of the Japanese as external economic force is in its own way a reflection of the desire many of the young people have to leave the Philippines, such as that of blind sex worker Bea (Rio Locsin) who is also involved with Alex but hoping to move to Saudi Arabia with her boyfriend Greg (Jojo Santiago) who has been offered employment there but later discovers that he’s been scammed, temporarily stranded in Bangkok until managing to arrange his passage home. Mass unemployment is a constant spectre, Baby’s father also out of work but lamenting the only job prospect he’s found pays so little and is so far away as to be economically pointless. Lack of other options later causes Greg to attempt to manipulate Bea into participating in live sex shows without her full consent while many of the women are forced into sex work in order to support their families. When Baby falls pregnant, realises Pebrero won’t marry her, and is sacked from the diner she too is pushed into accepting the sleazy customer’s offer but ultimately cannot go through with it. Meanwhile, Pebrero’s wife Adelina (Alma Moreno) is also exposed as a sex worker catering to wealthy Japanese clients rather than the nurse she had claimed to be leaving every day in a crisp white uniform for the hospital and later paying a heavy price for her duplicity. 

The crowded tenements inhabited by Baby and Adelina where several members of a large family share a single room stand in stark contrast to Alex’s well-appointed suburban home complete with servants his mother makes a point of talking down to, but what may start for him as a reckless curiosity rebelling against his comfortable life becomes a self-destructive odyssey through midnight Manila in which he eventually becomes addicted to drugs. In a climactic scene, Virgie and her husband batter him with nearby objects while the camera cuts ironically to a series of religious icons and a large statue of Jesus looking down on the scene of chaos before Alex abandons his family to reunite with Manoy. The capture of his friend Kano (Cherie Gil), a tomboyish lesbian in love with an unreceptive Bea, by the police is framed as a kind of crucifixion, the torturing of youth by an implacable authority which restricts its freedom and presents it only with despair. 

Adelina had tried to warn Baby that in order to survive Manila she would need to become “wiser than the men”, but the city is itself full of duplicities and secrets and Baby perhaps ironically the only one finally able to escape its false promises. The perhaps more hopeful coda in which a less curious Alex appears to awaken from his slumber lying peacefully in the light of a new dawn was apparently a concession to the censors but still leaves him lost in a kind of limbo neither in one place nor another but perpetually wandering. At once a portrait of a city lively and free with its series of gay discos and drag nights, weird cults in parks, and nighttime callisthenics classes, and of a place marred by exploitation and hopelessness, Bernal’s odyssey through through Manila by night finds only an elusive hedonism born of internal despair in the intense repressions of authoritarianism.

Trailer (dialogue free)

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)

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Towards the end of Lino Brocka’s Bona (Nora Aunor), the heroine recounts a dream she had in which she tries to escape a fire but finds herself met only by more flames. The inferno she attempts to outrun is that of the oppressive patriarchy of a fiercely Catholic society in which men can do as they please, but women are held to a different standard and in the end have little freedom or independence. 

Brocka opens with a lengthy sequence of a religious festival in which the suffering Mary is carried through the streets on the shoulders of men. Teenager Bona looks on but worships at a different altar, that of Gardo (Phillip Salvador), a struggling bit-player trying to make it in the Philippine film industry. What becomes apparent is that her fascination with Gardo is borne of her desire to escape her family home and the tyrannical reign of her authoritarian father (Venchito Galvez) who berates her for not helping her mother out enough with her business and later whips her with his belt because she stayed out too late. 

Though her family is quite middle class, Bona instals herself in Gardo’s home in the slums in search of greater freedom but ends up becoming his skivvy or perhaps even a kind of maternal figure patiently taking care of him while he continues to bring other women home and even charges her with taking another teenage girl he’s got pregnant to the doctor (who charges him “the same as before”) for an abortion. It’s possible that in Gardo she sees a different kind of masculinity, a performance of manliness, but gradually comes to realise he’s nothing more than an opportunistic lothario with no emotional interest in women let alone her. 

But by then, it’s too late. She’s stuck in a kind of limbo barred from returning home to her family because of her status as a fallen woman who has shamed them by living with a man she is not married to. Even once her father dies, her mother warns her to avoid her brother because his rage is indescribable and he does indeed drag her out of the funeral by her hair while issuing threats of violence. Perhaps what she was looking for was greater independence or an accelerated adulthood with the illusion of freedom, but she can only find it by relying on Gardo rather than attempting to chart her future alone. We can see that other women in the slum are in much the same position, loudly arguing with their husbands who cheat, laze around drinking, and permit them little possibility for any kind of individual fulfilment. 

Yet there is a moment where Bona seems free, ironically dancing at the wedding of a young man, Nilo (Nanding Josef), who she’d turned down but now perhaps regrets it comparing the conventional married life she might have had with him to the prison she’s designed for herself in her life with Gardo. Nilo may be the film’s nicest man, but at the same time he’s still a part of the system that Bona can’t escape. In fact, the only woman fully in charge of herself is a wealthy widow who later buys Gardo’s, not exactly affections, but perhaps loyalty. “She’ll do,” he less than romantically explains after admitting to marrying her for the convenience of her money oblivious of the effect the news may have on the by now thoroughly humiliated Bona whose rage is just about to boil over. 

Unable to free herself from this fanatical devotion or to find possibility outside it, Bona is trapped by her desires and marooned in a kind of no man’s land in which she cannot exist as an independent person but only as servant to a man. “I’ll just serve you,” she explains on moving in and thereafter slavishly catering to all of Gardo’s whims while he largely ignores her. She hasn’t so much escaped her father’s house, but built a prison for herself from which she cannot escape despite her oncoming displacement. A creeping character study, the film finds the titular heroine searching for a way out of the fire only to find herself engulfed by flames with no real prospect of salvation amid the ingrained misogyny of a fiercely patriarchal society.

Bona screens Nov. 14 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Love Child (Jonathan Jurilla, 2024)

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A young couple find themselves struggling in an uncompromising society while trying to raise their young autistic son who has complex needs in Jonathan Jurilla’s semi-autobiographical drama, Love Child. Inspired by the director’s own experiences of raising an autistic son, the film never shies away from the inherent difficulties involved but is as interested in the wider social context that makes life particularly hard for parents Ayla (Jane Oineza) and Pao (RK Bagatsing).

The first issue they face is their youth which though termed a “superpower” by a well-meaning older woman makes it difficult for them to raise a child without having had time to generate a financial buffer. Meanwhile, they also face a mild degree of prejudice because they are not actually married nor do they have a religion in a fiercely Catholic culture. The pair were still in university when Kali (John Tyrron Ramos) was conceived and subsequently had to break off their studies meaning not only that they’ve had to change course in life but that they’re locked out of the better paying jobs their degrees would have led to. Ayla was studying to become a lawyer but now has a part-time remote office job that is increasingly incompatible with raising Kali. Her unsympathetic boss complains about the noise and later lays into her about her priorities, claiming that she’s a mother too and she manages so Ayla’s on notice for the next time she infringes on workplace mores. 

Though Kali is now old enough to be enrolled in school, they struggle to find a place for him and are at a loss when he suffers bullying from one of the neighbourhood children after they send him to a government-run special school. It seems their only option is an expensive private institution, but it’s obviously a struggle for them on their already compromised incomes. Meanwhile, they’re constantly recommended other treatments and services that might help Kali’s development and made to feel like bad parents for not being able to afford them. Neither of them can rely on family support as Ayla’s mother disapproved of them having Kali in the first place and is hostile towards him because of his disability while Pao carries a degree of resentment towards his estranged father who abandoned the family and now lives in Australia. 

Pao’s relationship with his father informs the kind of father he’d like to be in his desire to protect his family, but the solutions that present themselves are those familiar to other struggling youngsters and would result in splitting the family up with one or both parents living abroad to earn higher salaries so they can afford the best education and treatment for Kali. Meanwhile, Ayla looks around her former friendship groups and realises that most people her age have either rejected or postponed the idea of starting a family and are instead spending their money on things like travel and entertainment or patiently saving to achieve financial stability. She wonders if they did the right thing or were naive to believe in love and that everything would somehow work out because they were a family. 

Though raising a child is hard enough on its own, the additional financial strain placed on them along with the impossibility of both looking after Kali and trying to earn a living is something exacerbated by the lack of provision for families like theirs especially those without the support of friends or relatives. Sacrificing their dreams to look after their son, the couple do everything they can to ensure he has the best future possible but are often frustrated by those around them who maybe prejudiced or lack understanding of kids of like Kali and the additional care he sometimes needs especially as his developmental process is obviously slower than average and he may never achieve independence. Though some of the meta commentary and references to tropes of a stereotypical Philippine rom-coms are a little on the nose, Jurilla focuses on the love the parents have for their child and their earnest attempts to do the best for him even at the cost of their own health and wellbeing while also hinting at the unfairness of the society around them in which there is little help available to those who do not have the resources to pay for that which should be provided for all.

Love Child screens Nov. 8/9 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

DitO (Takashi Yuki, 2024)

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A defeated boxer and absent father rediscovers the will to fight after an unexpected reunion with the daughter he abandoned to chase his dreams in Takashi Yuki’s Philippines-set sporting drama DitO. The title translates simply as “here” which is what Eiji (Takashi Yuki) and those around him eventually accept themselves as being, striving to create a place for themselves to belong rather than fruitlessly searching for one and finding themselves denied.

A contrast is eventually drawn between Eiji, an ageing boxer who remained in the Philippines when his wife (Machiko Ono) and child returned to Japan, and Joshua, a 17-year-old aspiring boxer and surrogate son figure whose boxing dreams are suddenly dashed by unexpected defeat and the death of his father from a long illness. Faced with these two blows, Joshua declares that he’s going to choose his family in giving up boxing to look after his younger siblings in direct contrast to the choice Eiji made to let his family leave him so that he could continue chasing a boxing glory he never achieved. 

When his now 17-year-old daughter Momoko (Momoko Tanabe) shows up out of the blue and tells him her mother has passed away, he’s a defeated figure still nagging his kindly boss Tamagon to set him up with a fight though having apparently fallen out with his coach some years previously. Her father’s living conditions evidently come as a shock to Momoko as she winds her way through the narrow alleyways of a local slum towards a small courtyard where Eiji lives in a home stewn with cardboard boxes that has no functional gas supply or other cooking facilities. In her youth, she’d seen him as a hero who keeps fighting no matter what, but here he’s clearly given up and is far from the saviour she hoped he’d be after travelling all the way from Japan where she believes she has nothing and no one to go back to. 

Meanwhile, as he reminds her the Philippines is not Japan and she finds it difficult to adjust to an environment that much less safe at least for women as her father cautions her not to go walking around alone and especially at night. Tamagon and coach Sese also paradoxically remind them that they shouldn’t trust Japanese people after the pair are scammed by an offer of an apartment which in truth seemed far too good to be true by a pair of Japanese expats apparently expressly targeting their fellow countrymen. Yet as she said, everything she has left in the world is “here” and so Momoko too decides to forge her own future in the Philippines rather than go looking for one if while also recapturing the past of her happy childhood memories from when they all lived together as a family. 

As Sese says, Eiji’s internal battle has narrowed his vision of the world and cost him the will to fight must as Joshua says that in understanding his fear he has lost the desire to fight it in the anxiety that he may lose. What they learn is that they must stand and fight for what they want, never giving in win or lose, though they will always have the familial solidarity of the boxing gym whatever else may happen to them. Essentially a family drama, the film is in part a tale of father and daughter learning to reconnect but also of the importance of making an active choice to “here” rather than passively existing in a place not of your own choosing. 

Momoko’s decision to clean her father’s long neglected house is not only a symbol of her desire to lighten his life and jolt him out of his inertia, but of a determination to make a home for herself and maybe even get the gas turned back on so she can use the kitchen. Nevertheless, it’s also clear that “here” is wherever you are and the thing is to embrace the now or change it and fight for your place to belong rather than let it beat the spirit out of you. In the end being a hero really just means staying in the fight with no fear of losing because you know you won’t stop fighting.

The Missing (Iti Mapukpukaw, Carl Joseph E. Papa, 2023)

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The title of Carl Joseph E. Papa’s meta animation The Missing (Iti Mapukpukaw) most obviously refers to the hero’s uncle with whom his mother has lost contact, but in a deeper sense refers to the protagonist himself and the various things he too is missing which notably includes his mouth. Shot in a rotoscope style, Eric’s (Carlo Aquino) mouth is literally blurred out as if it had been erased and smoothed over. He can no longer speak but uses a dry erase board to communicate with those around him.

His troubles start just he’s about to go on a sort of date with coworker Carlo (Gio Gahol) which ends with them discovering the body of his uncle who has apparently passed away in a lonely death. It’s it at this point that Eric is plagued by an alien who keeps trying to abduct him claiming that they have unfinished business. Eric later asserts that he’s afraid the alien is trying to take over his body, hinting at a deeper childhood trauma and anxiety over bodily autonomy and intimacy. The alien’s attacks seem intensify as he grows closer to Carlo, frustrating their tentative romance as if it actively trying to obstruct it. 

The alien’s presence leads to what may seem to others like strange or inconsiderate behaviour. He disappears on Carlo, locks him out of his flat, and seemingly drops out of contact for days on end causing him not an inconsiderate degree of worry given he’s just lost his uncle and appears to be in a state of emotional distress. Yet the most surprising thing is even on being told about the alien Carlo decides to just go with it, taking Eric’s explanation at face value and trying to help him evade it for as long as possible. He eventually admits that he can’t see what Eric sees and they aren’t where he thinks they are but otherwise provides a safe and non-judgmental presence that quietly supports him while he battles his internal demons. His mother Linda (Dolly De Leon) does something similar apparently aware of the alien’s existence, but not what lies behind it or what it really might mean.

Just as reality and fantasy begin to blur for Eric, Papa uses the medium to express his mental state as the world seems to literally crumble around him. The alien steals parts of his body and they literally disappear, a missing ear and blurred out eye along with a blankness where his hand should be. When Eric begins to recall his childhood memories, the animation style switches from the sophisticated rotoscoping of the rest of the film to something much simpler echoing a child’s drawings. In these sequences, the face of Eric’s uncle is always scribbled over in black pen echoing his more literal refusal to see and accept the past. He has been literally silenced by his trauma but now finds it banging on the doors of his mind demanding to be let in.

Yet the reason he is able to overcome it is precisely because of the love an acceptance he receives from his mother and Carlo who never question his reality or attempt to break him out of it, instead deciding to join him there and help him in his quest to get rid of the alien that has plagued him since his childhood. Only this way can he begin to reclaim the parts of himself that were missing, digging through the buried past to retrieve what was taken from him and eventually recovering his voice. 

His quest has a gently absurd quality as parts of him suddenly detach themselves and run away, leaving it unclear for much of the film if Eric’s alien is “real” in a more concrete sense or merely a representation of his childhood trauma and very much inspired by logics and aesthetics of a small child who has been forced to keep a secret out of fear and shame and thereby unable to communicate his pain. In the end it’s love that brings him out of it, a gentle, patient and unconditional love that takes him as he is and gives him the space to find his own way out his trauma. Filled with a sense of warmth despite the darkness of its centre Carl Joseph E. Papa’s strangely poignant film for all its talk of aliens and destruction is remarkably human allowing its protagonist to finally begins to recover himself thanks to the loving support of those around him.

The Missing screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

As If It’s True (John Rogers, 2023)

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An influencer enters into a mutually exploitative relationship with a vulnerable musician only to find herself falling for him for real, or perhaps not, in John Rogers’ non-rom-com As if It’s True. Taking aim at the wilful inauthenticity of influencer culture, Rogers explores the ways in which romance is really just performance while mutually beneficial relationships can nevertheless contain a power imbalance that adds to their emotional volatility. 

It could be said that Gem (Ashley Ortega) is permanently on the rebound. A subject of a viral meme after an ex filmed her having a mental breakdown after being fired from her job, Gem went on to harness her fame becoming a popular YouTube vlogger. But then fame seems to have got the better of her. Gem’s girlfriend Yara left amid rumours of her toxic behaviour and her feeds are now full of trolls berating her. Hoping to recapture the magic, Gem recruits Anthony to be her “boyfriend” though he soon tires of the arrangement, taking up with Gem’s friend Cielo.

Anthony resents the limitations placed on his romantic freedom by his empty relationship with Gem, though it seems that she may at least have harboured some “genuine” feelings for him. At a Halloween party, Gem meets melancholy musician James (Khalil Ramos) who is wearing the same Harry Potter costume as she is and undergoes a moment of romance that is equal parts flirtation and role play. A photographer asks them if they’re a couple and they don’t quite know how to respond but then each accept the label. It’s here that things start to get weird as Gem asks James to punch Anthony. He jokingly agrees but didn’t think she was serious, until she offered to compensate him for his efforts. 

The original meeting is then consumed in confusion and contradiction in which neither party is entirely sure what was really going on between them aside from a genuine sense of attraction. Gem wants James to get back at Anthony and also boost her ratings, while James seems like he’s interested in a more genuine romance but captivated by Gem’s wealth and illusionary power. The pair find themselves playacting romance for the cameras, coming up with a fake story of how they met while filming a series of couples moments to prove how in love they are. 

But the flaw in the plan is that the fans don’t take to James, seeing him as bland and taking an instant dislike to his coffee-shop style music. James begins to worry that Gem won’t like him if the fans don’t, while she becomes fed up with what she sees as his lack of drive. A climactic dinner tables fight provokes a series of harsh words on both sides as James complains he’s nothing but a pawn in Gem’s game and she accuses him of being a golddigger yet the rawness of the fight suggests two people who can’t be honest with themselves about how they feel let alone with each other.

Rogers plays with our own ability to discern the reality, leaving us unsure which scenes might be “real” and which are simply part of the skit. Trapped in Gem’s confusing world of inauthenticity, James begins to lose grip on himself, lost in a kind of dream world while Gem exploits his insecurity to prank him by suggesting she may leave him for another woman. They each at times claim that the relationship is now “real” and they’ve developed genuine feelings for each other but seemingly can’t quite accept them or escape from the performative quality of their romance.

As much becomes plain when Anthony and Ceilo get engaged, Cielo looking a little sheepish showing off the ring while implying that James must have something up his sleeve to one-up Anthony in the romance stakes, further fuelling his sense of jealous resentment and fragile masculinity. Even a “real” relationship is also performative in its empty gestures such as random flowers and cheerful selfies. Gem puts on act to meet James’ mother, but then who isn’t on their best behaviour to meet a potential in-law? She ends up liking her, finding something in her that her own parental figures may have lacked in the childhood trauma she shares only with James (or so she claims) that explains why she is the way she is. 

James has also had his fair share of mental health issues, something Gem recklessly exploits in getting him to make a video in which he “opens up”, while otherwise growing tired of feeling like Gem’s pet just trotted out to look cute on the internet while his attempts to use her to further his music career largely flounder. Then again, we have to wonder about the authenticity of what we’re seeing as Gem once again seems primed to put something together in the great highlight real of their “relationship”. Perhaps this is all a bit too, Gem “coming clean” about her real fake romance with James seemingly nowhere to be seen. Raw and embittered, Rogers’ anti-rom-com resents the digitalisation of love in which romance has become a public act defined by deed rather than feeling and the fake affirmation of social media clout has itself begun to trump human connection.

As If It’s True screens Nov. 3 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Asog (Seán Devlin, 2023)

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A non-binary former teacher bonds with a student during an impromptu road trip in the wake of a typhoon in Seán Devlin’s hilariously empathetic dramedy, Asog. As the opening title card explains, everyone in the film is a survivor of Typhoon Yolanda (also known as Super Typhoon Haiyan) which struck in 2013 causing mass devastation and loss of life, but it’s also clear that the effects of the storm are still being felt not least in the waves of corporate colonialism that keep lapping at the shores.

As Jaya (Rey Aclao) recalls in their voice over, Yolanda took everything from them when the TV station where they filmed their TV show was plunged underwater ending their career as a presenter. Returning to teaching they can see that the storm has created a generation of traumatised children struggling to allay their fear and anxiety or otherwise deal with loss. Arnel (Arnel Pablo) lost his mother some time previously and seems to have been more or less abandoned by his father of whom he eventually goes in search at the behest of his aunts keen to start preparations for her memorial service. 

Jaya is also beginning to question their relationship with partner Cyrus (Ricky Gacho Jr.) which is only further strained when they abruptly quit their job after arguing with their boss, announcing that they plan to travel to Sicogon to enter a gay beauty pageant. It’s on the way that they meet up with Arnel who is travelling in the same direction but confused and alone having had to jump off a bus after dropping half his traveling expenses, which he was cradling in coin in his hands, in the road. Arnel perhaps hopes that his teacher whom he knows as “Mr. Andrade” will take him under their wing, but as it turns out Jaya doesn’t really have it together either. They’re travelling on a shoestring mainly by push bike and side car and sleeping on benches at railway stations. 

In any case, their journey takes them through the ravaged landscape until they finally reach the island and hear from its remaining villagers of what’s happened there, a corporate invasion which offered them aid but only if they surrendered their rights to their ancestral property. The venue for the beauty pageant is in the new resort built on top of stolen land while a small number of islanders who’ve refused to leave continue to fight for their rights and it seems are winning. Devlin casts real locals as the aggrieved islanders, and tells their story through the roundabout medium of a children’s story in which a swarm of mosquitos eventually deposed a king because though they were small, there were a lot of them, they stuck together, and they didn’t give up. 

Jaya likens the corporatising takeover as akin to that of the Philippines itself by Philip the Second of Spain who gives the islands their name and becomes in a way the crabby king of the fairy tale. They recall a story about Laurence Fishburne remarking in an interview that the Filipino people made him feel far more welcome than he ever had in America, though Jaya has often felt unwelcome themself. An old lady complains to see them putting on makeup on a bus and when they make a witty retort it’s Jaya and Arnel who are thrown off the bus. Cyrus and his previous partner had tried to have a child via a surrogate but the birth mother changed her mind, stating that she did not want the baby to be raised by a gay couple so had decided to keep it. But by contrast the old lady in Sicogon tells them that there have always been people like Jaya and that had they a name in an older language, Asog, so they always have been and belong here an integrated and accepted part of their culture. 

Through their journey together Jaya becomes a kind of mother figure to the young Arnel who felt alone in his grief abandoned by a father who abruptly left him behind. Grief changes shape, but it doesn’t end they advise him, quoting Keanu Reeves, revealing that they have learned to see their own mother who died when they were a child in the beauty of flowers or sunlight or passing birds as Arnel will too in time. The passing crisis allows Jaya the chance to quite literally rebuild their relationship with Cyrus while feeling grateful that at least they have this time to wait around together. As they said, their job was to help people cast away their troubles, countering despair with joy and laughter and togetherness which in itself gives the mosquito to the courage to keep swarming, fighting for its rights and refusing to be beaten by intimidating corporatising colonialists.

Asog screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Festival trailer (English subtitles)

Where Is the Lie? (Marupok AF, Quark Henares, 2023)

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What is it that motivates acts of seemingly pointless cruelty, why do people obsessively waste their own lives trying to make those of others miserable? Quark Henares’ inspired by real events (depending on who you ask) catfishing drama Where is the Lie? (Marupok AF) sees a trans woman fall victim to homophobic love fraud amid a climate of intense transphobia and subsequently make the decision to take a stand not as a petty act of revenge but to reclaim her dignity and protect her community while generously wishing her tormentor well. 

The catfisher, Beanie (Maris Racal), is given the right to reply through a series of confessional videos which slowly gain prominence towards the film’s conclusion. She admits that she knows what she did but does not really understand why she did it save justifying herself that she’s been “bullied” by members of the LGBTQ+ community in the past. She deliberately mangles the acronym and makes a point of using male pronouns to refer to the trans woman she’s currently targeting, Janzen (EJ Jallorina), but later starts to slip up instinctively using “she” after spending months talking to her normally over a dating app posing as buff model Theo (Royce Cabrera). Asked what the point of all this is, Beanie doesn’t have much of an answer beyond the cruelty itself explaining that the end goal is simply to ghost the target once they’ve made an emotional connection to cause them to feel hurt or humiliated. Perhaps these seem like low level consequences to Beanie who regards the catfishing as something like a weird hobby though one she expends an immense amount of time on seeing as she doesn’t appear to have anything else going on in her life aside from her actual job as a video director working in the fashion industry. 

The strange thing is though is Beanie describes Janzen as fun to talk to and they even seem to strike up a genuine connection over their shared interest in design. Beanie then finds herself in dilemma, simultaneously accelerating the plan to avoid having to deal with her complicated feelings but then restarting it after its natural end point by inserting herself into the conversation posing as Theo’s cousin and apologising on his behalf for his treatment of her in a moment of panic. The implication is that Beanie’s behaviour is motivated by an internalised homophobia in which she cannot bear to admit her desire for other women keeping her connection with Janzen because she is attracted to her but simultaneously denying it through a deliberate attempt to cause her pain and humiliation in returning her feelings vicariously through the fake Theo persona.

Some may feel that the film to too sympathetic towards outward transphobe Beanie or that once again implying the villain is closeted is unhelpful, but there may be something in her claims to be a kind of victim too in that her internalised homophobia is caused by societal conservatism in a largely Catholic, patriarchal culture. The film is clear on the dangers and discrimination Janzen faces daily both online and off as her friends remark on the case of a trans woman being arrested for using the ladies’ bathroom and later TV news footage shows president Duterte pardoning a US soldier who had been convicted of murdering a transgender sex worker. As the film begins, Janzen’s boyfriend breaks up with her over his discomfort about publicly dating a trans woman, implying that he is ashamed or embarrassed in his inability to explain the relationship to his older conservative parents. An online date then goes south when he realises she is trans. As her friends tell her Theo seems too good to be true especially as his social media only contains professionally taken photos and no personal posts or connections but Janzen is blinded by love and deeply wants to believe that the relationship is “real”.

That might go someway to explaining why she puts up with so much nonsense from Theo and continues to interact with him even after he calls her a series of slur words, leaves her waiting at the airport for a fake meeting, and then dumps her in a Jollibee after convincing her to travel all the way to Manila knowing she has no return ticket or place to stay. Playing out almost like an incredibly perverse Cyrano de Bergerac, the film at times pushes Janzen into the background in favour of exploring Beanie’s motivations for her seemingly senseless, sadistic cruelty, but subsequently allows her to reclaim centrestage in owning her own story by taking a stand against transphobic bullying on behalf of the other victims and her wider community while very much claiming the moral high ground by wishing Beanie nothing but peace though whether she’ll ever find it is anybody’s guess. 

Where Is the Lie? screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © Anima Studios, Kroma Entertainment, December 2022.© 2022 Kroma Entertainment. All Rights Reserved

12 Weeks (Anna Isabelle Matutina, 2022)

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“Not all women want to be mothers” according to the heroine of Anna Isabelle Matutina’s 12 Weeks, yet this is apparently largely what society expects of them. Faced with an unexpected pregnancy at 40, Alice decides on abortion though it is technically illegal in the fiercely Catholic Philippines and she finds herself having to offer justification for her choices while trying to process her complicated relationship with her own mother who often tells her that she too wanted an abortion but obviously did not go through with it and left shortly after Alice was born to become a domestic worker in Hong Kong. 

The irony is that Alice (Max Eigenmann) works for an NGO supporting people displaced by natural disaster or civil unrest but is to an extent displaced herself in her estrangement from her mother, Grace (Bing Pimentel). In a poignant moment after having been made aware of the pregnancy by Alice’s violet ex Ben (Vance Larena), Grace brings out a box of baby clothes that once belonged to Alice only she never got to wear them because her grandmother who was raising her told Grace not to send anything but money because she had no way of knowing what size her daughter was. Grace is excited about the prospect of becoming a grandmother because it gives her a second chance at the motherhood she was denied by economic circumstance especially as the implication is she could play a larger role in their upbringing while Alice continues with her career. 

But even considering the strained relationship between them, Grace is far from supportive more or less taking over booking doctor’s appointments on her daughter’s behalf without really consulting her. Aside from the awkwardness and upset of the situation, Alice cannot discuss the abortion with her mother because of its illegality and the risks it might cause to herself and those otherwise involved in it. To be able to access an abortion safely, she has to undergo a counselling session and is then told that her operation will take place at 11pm hinting at its illicitness that it must take place under cover of darkness. The counsellor is sympathetic and clear that she isn’t trying to change her mind even if some of the questions seem invasive or patriarchal. Asking if Alice has been subject to domestic violence she offers help making sure that she’s not being pressured into an abortion she might not want by violent partner or the necessity of escaping them. 

Ben is indeed violent and it’s a fact that if she changes her mind and keeps the baby it will become much more difficult to keep him out of her life. Slightly younger than she is, he is moody and insecure while financially supported by Alice and living in a home she owns. He is not a responsible person with whom to raise a child though places extreme pressure on her to have the baby and manipulatively leaks the pregnancy news to Grace knowing she’ll do the same. Alice discovers that in reality everyone else is making her decisions for her, including a colleague who suddenly cancels a trip she was supposed to make to a disaster area on the grounds that his own wife has recently had a miscarriage and in his opinion it’s not safe for her to go. 

Set during the imposition of martial law on Mindanao in 2017, the film implies that a kind of martial law already exists for women who are unable to make their own decisions about their reproductive health or exercise their own autonomy. Alice is repeatedly told that she should have the baby because she is already 40 and the chance won’t come again though little thought is given to whether she wanted the chance or not while her own thoughts surrounding motherhood are clouded by the relationship she has with Grace which was largely affected by the economic realities that forced her to become a migrant worker. In part she rejects becoming a mother out of anxiety worrying that she is not suited to it, but is also conflicted in its inextricable ties to Ben and with wider patriarchal violence in general depriving her of the ability to choose from all angles. In the end a choice is made for her in the cruellest of ways leaving her more or less powerless with only the small comfort of female solidarity. 

12 Weeks screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.