Movie Reviews: All 7 QCinema Circle Competition films

MANILA, Philippines – With 7 full-length films in competition at the QCinema 2016 film festival, it’s hard to decide which to watch.

The festival, which runs from October 13 to 22, is set to end soon, and it’s time to buckle down, narrow down your choices, and pick the movie you’d most like to see.

Aside from the awards given on October 19, these movie reviews from Oggs Cruz should give you a hand at picking which of the ones the Circle Competition you’d like to catch.

Read his reviews below, watch the movies’ trailers, and check out the QCinema movie schedule here.

Purgatoryo review: Shock and awe 

 

Before Derick Cabrido allows his audience out of the decrepit morgue and into the outside world where corpses are used to stage fake wakes (and gambling is tolerated), he first mounts a spectacle of shock. The morgue’s denizens include a shrewd owner (Bernardo Bernardo) and his two unhinged assistants (Jess Mendoza and Kristoffer King). The spectacle: a scene that dehumanizes the dead bodies seen only as tools for an illicit trade. 

The scene, shot in a single long take from the disquieting perspective of the body that is being embalmed and filled with formalin, sets the tone for the deranged and depraved world of Purgatoryo, a world that is not unlike our own but one that Cabrido cleverly shrouds with the blackest comedy. It renders palatable its bleak musings on the inhumanity that humanity is capable of.   

Cabrido is shaping up to be quite a formidable filmmaker. The violent but sensational brawls between kids in Children’s Show (2014), his debut, puts his viewers in that uncomfortable situation of being thrilled by the brash display of brutality, rendering them as exploitative as the people who cheer, jeer, and gamble at the expense of innocence.

The most memorable parts of Tuos (2016), his well-mounted sophomore effort, are the animated sequences that gel the tale been passed on for generations.

Purgatoryo is cleverly brazen in its depiction of the abominable absurdities that are better left unseen. It puts everything out in the open, stripping both the characters and their lifeless cadavers of whatever dignity, identity and morality that could have rendered them human. It is all too painful to watch, but Cabrido crafts the film in a way that is nearly impossible not to look. 

It is therefore inevitable that Purgatoryo would falter when it finally attempts to paint its subjects with the humanity it so deliciously snatched away from them.

The film’s final moments, where most of the characters get the comeuppance they deserve, are all detached and unaffecting, no matter how much Cabrido intensifies the dramatics. The film has been so busy shocking the senses that the viewers have been rendered numb, unable to feel for any of the characters who are only belatedly portrayed as capable of any real love or compassion. In the end, Purgatoryo becomes a desensitizing showcase whose more profound meanings get lost in its bizarrely morbid obsessions. 

Best. Partee. Ever. review: Injustice league

 

When Mikee Ledesma (JC de Vera) is apprehended by cops for peddling ecstasy during his birthday party, the first thing he mutters is a threat based on his being the son of a mayor.

His threats are met with ridicule by the cops, and he eventually surrenders to his fate. He lands in jail, where he graduates from being the scared rich boy to the head of a prison gang composed of other homosexual inmates. He also falls in love with a fellow inmate (Jordan Herrera). In other words, the long years he spent inside prison while waiting for the decision of his case weren’t all that bad.

Sure, the ordinary comforts that his affluent station in life can afford him were taken away, but life went on. The same however cannot be said for the rest of the Philippines’ prison population who don’t share family names with powerful politicians. 

If there is anything that H. F. Yambao’s Best. Partee. Ever. lacks that could have completed its thesis on society’s injustice, it is the exploration of the harsher other side, of the convicts who aren’t blessed with the privilege of wealth and connections. As it is, its commentary on social divides is lost in its unsubtle depictions of blossoming romances and queer advocacies. 

There is a glaring disconnect between Honee Alipio’s perceptive scripting and Yambao’s more populist directorial goals. The essential court scenes that should have enunciated the slow-moving wheels of justice feel like fillers instead of statements, while the makeouts, the riots, and other spectacles are all designed to be remembered. 

Baboy Halas review: Stories in the margins

 

Bagane Fiola’s Baboy Halas, which focuses on a forest dweller who hunts to provide for his family and his tribe, is best defined as an immersive experience than a coherent narrative. It is most mesmerizing when it strays seemingly without an aim, when it treats its subject not as a pawn beholden to the grooves of Fiola’s invented fiction, but as a living, breathing and feeling person.  

Unfortunately, Baboy Halas has to go through the motions of telling a story. The story itself is quite fascinating, one that blends folklore and survival in a setting that is both contained within the depths of a forest whose boundaries are homes to warring tribes.

While Fiola can create marvels out of the ordinary, such as when the very simple tool of zooming out evokes a sense of drama in a mundane act of a man climbing a tree, the inconsistency of his filmmaking techniques simply does not favor the simplicity of the tale he wants to tell.

The film lacks a dependable rhythm. Oftentimes, the film would just meander towards documentary territories, which would be all good had it boldly stayed there. However, the film would often abruptly retreat back to the conventions of narrative cinema, leading to confusion.

Baboy Halas is a film that works better in theory than as a final product. There is enough enchantment in its sometimes hypnotic and sometimes confounding exploration of communities alienated by modernity. Sadly, the film falls short in its lofty ambition of carving a lucid fable out of a people whose stories continue to be left in the margins. 

 Patay na si Hesus review: Offbeat road trip

 

The story of Victor Villanueva’s Patay na si Hesus is aptly uncomplicated, with its familiar elements culled by screenwriter Fatrick Tabada from the many comedic family road movies that have been made before it.

As the title clearly says, Hesus is dead. Hesus’ estranged wife, Iyay (Jaclyn Jose), decides to travel from Cebu to Dumaguete by minivan with her three children to visit him one last time before he is laid to rest.

Predictably, the children harbor conflicts. Jude (Chai Fonacier) is the hopeless romantic, half of an otherwise lopsided lesbian relationship. Jay (Melde Montanez) is a loser who discovers that he is about to be a father. Hubert (Vincent Viado), who has Down Syndrome, appears to be the only one so far without grave problems.  

The film isn’t needlessly pretty, with cinematographer Ruel Antipuesto framing most of the scenes to service humor instead of littering the film with picturesque landscapes of rural Philippines.

There is clearly a charm to its being offbeat, to its being specifically designed not to look like some precious piece art. It is irreverent, down to its crafting, edited and contoured almost to feel like a hackjob – except that it is really not, because each hiccup and mistake adds to its overall flavor of grand mockery. 

Not all of its jokes work. Some punchlines either get lost in translation or are burdened by an overstretched set-up. However, when the gags work, they are riotous. The film’s pleasures are abundant, and almost all of them are quite deliciously sinful.

Patay na si Hesus is merrily blasphemous, but not without reason. While the film may seem like a collection of hilarious stunts, its cleverly hidden heart beats for a country that has been far too long encaged by norms and traditions. In a way, the film begs for its viewers to let go, to strip itself of shit-stained habits, and to take that plunge at love, at impertinence, at anarchy, at whatever they need to feel unshackled.

Hinulid Review: Overloaded train

 

The scope of Kristian Cordero’s Hinulid is immense. From a humble story of a grieving mother (Nora Aunor) bringing home the ashes of her murdered son back to Bicol, the film explodes with a constellation of ideas. With great ambition comes great care. Cordero treats his subject matters, both the woman who is the center of his musings and Bicol, with all the love and respect he can muster and it shows.

The film is elegantly crafted, with each scene designed to be full of grace and meaning. Clearly, the film is very personal, one that has Cordero spilling his heart and soul without relent, which is good, except that the film borders on being overindulgent in its own brilliance, making it sometimes close to feeling impenetrable.

Hinulid is an overwhelming film. At its best, it is tender and intimate, with Aunor exemplifying quiet aches with fragile restraint. At its worst, it is suffocating, with Cordero barraging the screen with hordes of metaphors that only needlessly burden his point. The film feels formless. It is almost like an extended montage of scenes and sequences that make their many points in roundabout ways.

Cordero’s dilemma is apparent. He seems to insist that Hinulid be a monumental essay, a grand document expounding on the complexities of his beloved Bicol, how it is a land built on contrasts, of people who subscribe to both myths and Catholic tradition.

At the same time, he aspires for his film to be affecting, to be able to fluently communicate the heartbreak of a mother losing her only son to senselessness. The result however is a film wanting to be so many things, it at times loses focus and clarity. 

It is quite unfortunate because the film has a soul, and its soul is one that is worth exposing. Sadly, Cordero dresses it up with so many costumes it becomes abstract and obscure. Hinulid is best served as a delicate haiku. Instead, it is an unwieldy epic. 

Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B Review: The struggle to be whole

 

During her frequent bouts of loneliness, Jewel (Ryza Cenon) watches TV, switching from the news show that covers the regular grisly killings of drug dealers to her favorite romantic soap opera. It seems Jewel’s attention is as divided as her identity.

A sweet girl who keeps a harmless turtle as her choice of pet during the day, she transforms into a manananggal at night, luring random men in heat before literally devouring their hearts.

Prime Cruz’s Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23 B is also as divided as its atypical heroine. The film is a gruesome horror only in parts. Its greatest conceit is that it is also and predominantly a romance, one whose primary anguish is the nearly impossible struggle to make two incongruent parts a beautiful whole. 

The film is quite gorgeously crafted. Tey Clamor’s camerawork is crisp and easy on the eyes. The editing by Galileo Te is fluid and unrushed, which allows each handsomely frame to bleed with even the subtlest of emotions. It is very easy to be hypnotized by the adorable grooves and beats of the film, which blend a very contemporary sensibility into a story that is as old as time. 

While Cenon wonderfully disappears into her role, Martin del Rosario, who plays the boy-next-door who slowly falls in love with the girl, tends to be more aloof than absorbing.

Their chemistry is forced, but with Cruz’s intuitive direction, the romance still works. The film however is more than just its clever slant on the romantic genre. Its political nuances resonate. 

Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23 B is that rare romance that does not just aspire for escape. It also subtly plants the seeds of dissent, all in the name of love.

Women of the Weeping River Review: No man’s land

 

 

Peace, like most beautiful things, is fragile. Sheron Dayoc’s Women of the Weeping River centers on that fragile peace, that inexplicable calm between storms that define the delicate situation of Mindanao.

A negotiation opens the film. On one side is an aggrieved family, and on the other side are the perpetrators. In the middle is an elderly women, wizened by decades of surviving through repetitive cycles of war and peace, trying to broker some sort of accord for the two feuding clans.

From the background, a woman, the wife of the man who was killed, has the final say. The pain is just too fresh for forgiveness. There can be no peace, but life moves on. 

It is a quiet film, one that thrives in the delicacy of situations. It is also a very carefully shot film. Each image and frame conveys not just shallow elegance but also the brittle serenity of the land.

Women of the Weeping River is crystal clear in its purpose, with itts lyrical visuals, its melancholic meandering, and its infrequent breaks to have its characters engage in discourse. They blend to present a coercive and perceptive investigation as to how a land with its distinct history of clans, religions, and changing political affiliations have given rise to a situation where strife and violence are constant.

Part of what makes Women of the Weeping River even more compelling is its insistence on depicting the conflict from the perspective of women. Satra (Laila Ulao), the widow who is at the core of the intertwining narratives of the film, is as luminous as the landscape. She is also as unpredictable even amidst her sheen of profound dignity.

The women that Satra represents suffer the greatest. Their fathers, husbands and sons perish, and they remain, they bear the pain, unable to forgive, with their lives moving on, until they become old and wise, but still unable to resolve feuds and prevent wars. The film is simply sublime. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.