Showing posts with label
Metro Manila Film Festival 2016.
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Showing posts with label
Metro Manila Film Festival 2016.
Show all posts
Saving Sally is a fantastical film that rightly benefited from the revamped selection process of the Metro Manila Film Festival. Although it is an animated film, it is not an outright film treat for the whole family. The story targets mostly teenagers.
The lead male character, Marty, is like a Pokemon Go trainer able to see monsters. Other human beings don’t see the ogres and creatures. Only the comic book geek Marty can see them. Several of the monsters are humans while others maybe mere figments of the young artist’s imagination.
The world inhabited by Marty (Enzo Marcos) is in muted colors. If there is one major complaint I can think about the film then it will be the lack of vibrant colors. The bland colors may be reflective of Marty’s life but I think it is more a reflection of the film’s financial difficulties. The filmmakers may have been forced to scrimp on low-end cameras just to keep the production afloat. One thing’s for sure, though. They patiently labored for more than 10 years to bring the film to fruition.
The simple yet effective special effects are non-intrusive. The audience will agreeably believe a world where monsters co-exist with humans. A memorable, magical moment was conjured with a sprightly Sally’s unleashing of her mechanical appendage ala Inspector Gadget. Right off the bat, Sally becomes a cool character.
There are other cool moments in the film. In a film teeming with samples of varied visual art formats, the simple ones hold their own against complex formats in telling a story. The charming pop-up Book of Happy is indeed a book filled with wonder and joy. The production design is a mix of Seussical whimsy and Tim Burtonesque wackiness. The smorgasbord of visual formats and mediums work because they visualize the changing mood of Marty.
The lanky Marty is in love with Sally (Rhian Ramos). But he feels like being trapped in a war zone. The truth is he is friendzoned and cannot slay the monstrous fear of rejection. Sally asked him a comic book question: 'Why do people never notice that the geek is the same person as the hunky hero?' Well, he answered that it is because no one cares for the nerdy people. Yes, no one pays attention to average-looking geeks like him. However, just like superhero comic books, there's a hero inside Marty after all.
The film’s witty word puns, and irreverent characters with dickheads seem to come straight from the fertile mind of wordsmith Joey de Leon, the pages of Jingle magazine, and the pen of Roxlee. Little details such as a funny company signboard leave a smile on my face. Sandara is the name of the park frequented by the two youngsters. The park design is similar to that of the park featured in the film 500 Days of Summer. This may be a homage because I do recall seeing the word Summer up in the screen.
I like it that the filmmakers didn’t dumb down their target audience. Teenagers can learn a thing or two on how the young characters deal with their problems. Bullying, premarital sex, physical abuse, and first love jitters are just some of the issues tackled by the film. Sally’s determination to leave her problems behind and take flight resulted in her ultimate project.
Saving Sally is a blast! No other Filipino film feature is like it. The film transports the audience into different worlds and teleports them back to their homes with adorable family scenes. I loved the scene wherein the mother of Marty feigns sleep on the sala set because she wants to hear fresh, first-hand account of Marty's activities. Such heartwarming, lovely scenes serve as counterpoint to the gloomy touches of the film. The end credits feature a more colorful and more animated way of showing love filled life of Marty.
Kabisera could have been a major contender. The Nora Aunor film should have come out a-blazing with rapid fire punches. Alas, it lacks the bite of Oro to truly leave a mark as a strong political commentary. It came out limping and half-hearted in highlighting its message of justice for victims of extra-judicial killings.
Mercy De Dios (Nora Aunor) is an observant wife who is suspicious of her husband’s cash transactions. She thinks something is fishy. The audience, too, has an inkling that the husband is up to no good.
The surprise killing of the husband (Ricky Davao) by armed men comes as a shock because we aren’t sure if the husband is really a criminal. This ambivalence of the film towards the true nature of the husband weakens the flow of the story. It is neither here nor there.
The film seems to point out that it doesn’t matter if the husband is really a criminal or not. The real message is the police have no right to kill a person who surrenders peacefully. However, the message would have been more forceful if the film showed the husband involved in criminal activities.
I wholeheartedly agree with the film’s message. Persons of interest, druggies, and criminals must be given their due process in court. They should not be killed cold-bloodedly. If the killers are protected and allowed to go free, then it wouldn’t take long before they indulge in other dastardly deeds such as kidnap-for-ransom.
With the death of her husband, Mercy goes the legal route in search of justice. The film conclusion takes the safe path.
Kabisera missed the chance to become this generation’s Sister Stella L. I was expecting Mercy to break the fourth wall and address the issue of extra-judicial killings head-on. It would have been brave to hear a wife castigate the administration and the police over their ruthless drive to exterminate druggies and criminals. It would have been great to see her eyes speak volume about the wanton killing of thousands of Filipinos.
In this latest film of Alvin Yapan, there are no clearcut heroes. There are no outright villains, either. However, due to a minor direction lapse the people behind the film are being called names and ostracized as villains.
It was shocking to see a dog being prepared to be roasted or boiled. From my recollection, there seems to be no footage of the dog being whacked or killed. But, there on the big screen we can clearly see a skinned dead dog prepped up and ready to be cooked.
There are a hundred and one ways to simulate the process of preparing a dog meat dish or portraying the food traditions of small-scale miners. Sadly, the filmmakers didn’t try any of it. On the other hand, there’s no good reason for the gory sight of a dead dog.
It is a pity that the dog killing controversy tarnishes the luster of Oro’s brilliance. The film has the eye of Badil for small island economics, politics, and social interaction. It boasts of an ensemble acting that is second to none. I’m all praise for Irma Adlawan‘s award-winning performance as a long-tenured kapitana. I admire the film’s courage to pinpoint the mastermind behind the killings of 4 small-scale miners in Camarines Sur.
A current lawmaker from the province decries the film’s portrayal of the kapitana as a heroine. My reading of the kapitana is different from that of the lawmaker.
The thing I like most about the film Oro is its multi-faceted treatment of the kapitana character. She is not a goody-two-shoes character in my opinion. She is a traditional greedy politician holding on to power for two decades. She wields a vise-like grip on the mining industry in her community. Her handling of her workers is akin to that of a feudal system. She eliminates competitors via unfounded rumors. When she gets kicked out from the mining industry, she uses social media to gain sympathy.
The kapitana portrays herself as a benevolent benefactor. The reality is the workers are so poor that they are dependent on her. With her wealth and power, the kapitana should have built several alternative livelihood projects for the workers and residents.
The shrewd kapitana is similar to film producers kicked out from the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF). These film producers and supporters decry the non-inclusion of their films by harping on its effect on their alleged beneficiaries. They bewail the fact that organizations such as Mowelfund will no longer receive huge windfall from festival proceeds. They utilize the social media in voicing out their disappointment to the revamped selection process.
During their decade-long monopolization of the MMFF, these star-producers didn’t pursue alternative stories and characters that enrich the lives of viewers. As the Cinemalaya 2016 teaser aptly pointed out, the aging film stars continue to appear in recycled stories. The only difference is that the leading ladies are getting younger. Some star-producers are so greedy they allow themselves to be used for product placements in their films. Just like kapitana, they share a minuscule, teeny-amount of windfall from their profits in order to project a philanthropic image.
Oro has the bravery and guts to bring out in the open an issue involving a powerful clan of lawmakers. Alas, with all the idiotic lies told by the film stakeholders regarding the dog killing incident, several viewers may see the film as a figment of the filmmakers’ wild imagination.
This exceptional movie was high on my list of must-watch films at the Metro Manila Film Festival 2016 (MMFF). I first learned of its miraculous entry into the festival during a film forum in November 2016. I was happy to hear the good news from moderator Ed Cabagnot. I was impressed by filmmaker Baby Ruth Villarama-Gutierrez’s previous documentary Little Azkals and looked forward to seeing her latest work.
Sunday Beauty Queen highlights the inner beauty of hardworking Filipina domestic helpers in Hong Kong. During Sundays, they converge in public places and indulge in their favorite activities and hobbies. The focus of the documentary is a group of domestic helpers joining and organizing beauty contests. Their imperfections, terrible grammar, and embarrassing experiences are laid out in the open. They may not have faces and bodies like those of our Miss Universe and Miss World winners but they are confidently beautiful with big, big hearts.
Filmmaker Gutierrez, whose mother is a former domestic helper, portrays such Overseas Filipino Workers as a boon not only to their families and country but also to the whole world. Fellow filmmaker Jack Soo, an employer of a domestic helper/beauty contestant, says that if the Philippine government decides to stop the influx of Filipina domestic helpers to Hong Kong, China, and other countries, the world will be in big trouble. Singapore barged into the list of Olympic gold winning countries courtesy of a young swimmer who proudly claimed to have been raised by a Filipina nanny. A Chinese ballet teacher says employing a Filipina maid is worth every dollar spent. The average monthly salary of a Filipina domestic helper is $550 dollars, which is equivalent to the salary of a junior executive in the Philippines.
The documentary will put a smile on your face just like the infectious smile of Filipino tourist Chuck Gutierrez, film editor, producer and husband of the filmmaker. No matter where they are, Filipinos will always show their sense of humor, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies. There’s a Filipina cook in Hong Kong who takes pictures of her Pinoy food dishes neatly arrayed on a rectangular table. Her primary objective is to make her Facebook friends envious of her. Another Filipina gets the boot from her employer after breaking a curfew. She was so engrossed joining a beauty contest that she lost track of time. Or maybe she’d had enough of working for her employer. There are tales told of ruthless employers but there are also heartwarming stories about Chinese employers treating Filipina domestic helpers as part of family.
Sunday Beauty Queen is a more impressive documentary than Little Azkals. The latter took some time before it gets things rolling. Sunday Beauty Queen plunges immediately to the lives of colorful characters. I liked it better than the three local documentaries shown at the Cinema One Originals Festival 2016.
The inclusion of Sunday Beauty Queen to the MMFF justifies the revamped selection process. I’ve seen three other entries and they are quite good. So far, there are no fillers among the entries. Bravo! Take a bow, members of the MMFF executive and selection committees.
