Established in 1990, the Young Critics Circle is composed of members of Philippine academe who, through the years, have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema. Coming from various disciplines, we bring into the analysis of film an interdisciplinary approach.
Still from 12 Weeks (Anna Isabelle Matutina, 2022)
When Alice (Max Eigenmann), a forty-year-old, independent, and unmarried woman, learns she’s pregnant, she decides she needs an abortion. Anna Isabelle Matutina’s 12 Weeks is one of the few films in the country that touch on this topic, following its main protagonist through the circuitous emotional turns that unfold as she ponders on whether to push through with the procedure or not. Among the few, Lino Brocka’s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (1974) begins with a forced abortion that leads to Kuala (Lolita Rodriguez) losing her sanity. In Brocka’s work, abortion is a weapon utilized by Cesar (Eddie Garcia) to bestow violence upon Kuala’s own bodily agency, as well to indicate Cesar’s own moral degradation. Meanwhile, Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Moral (1982) features Joey (Lorna Tolentino), a UP graduate who wants to abort an unwanted pregnancy. Joey, however, fails to convince her friend and mother to provide cash for the procedure. Eventually, she ends up having a miscarriage due to an undiscovered medical condition. 12 Weeks bears some similarities to Joey’s arc in Moral, as both include a complicated mother-daughter relationship that finds a turning point in a miscarriage. These women-centered stories unfold under the shadow of military rule that has either recently passed (as in the case of Moral) or is unfolding in a different location (which is the case for 12 Weeks).
Our initial meeting with Alice is staged like an interrogation. Seated across, she addresses the audience directly, answering questions from a disembodied voice. Her responses and the line of questioning imply that she is being assessed for an illicit procedure, for in the Philippines, abortion remains illegal without exemptions. Questions asked soon become probing and intimate and Alice finds herself answering some and evading others. Eigenmann portrays a character propped up by a quiet, subterranean fortitude. While seemingly undaunted in her responses, the performance is nuanced enough to allow minute moments of doubt to surface. Here then is protagonist shown in a moment of vulnerability, but also, of strength. At times wry and funny, 12 Weeks is a distinctive work that not only touches on a contested medical procedure and women’s rights issue, but also captures some of the experiences and travails of middle-class womanhood in our contemporary period. While not the first of its kind in Philippine cinema, its arrival still feels like a long time coming.
Still from Leonor Will Never Die (Martika Ramirez Escobar, 2022) trailer.
One slow afternoon, Leonor (played by Sheila Francisco) sees a newspaper advertisement for screenplay submissions after replacing an old light bulb inside her bedroom. Downstairs, her son Rudy (Bong Cabrera) argues with a mailman about their electricity bill. While an action movie plays on the television, the former genre director takes out an unfinished screenplay from her trunk, titled Ang Pagbabalik ng Kwago. This scene sets off the narrative which reveals her family’s strained relationships, her losses, and intention to finish a film-related project in her twilight years.
Martika Ramirez Escobar’s first directorial feature, Leonor Will Never Die (2022), follows a charming retiree named Leonor, in her pursuit of finishing a screenplay for an action film, featuring a benevolent construction worker, Ronwaldo (Rocky Salumbides) who seeks justice for the undue murders of his older brother Conrado (Raion Sandoval) and mother Lolita (Rosario Elena Perez). In action films, the main elements include: a spectacular physical action, a narrative emphasis on fights, chases, explosions, and a combination of state-of-the-art special effects and stunt-work. In Filipino action films, special effects may not be found consistently. Works in this genre are filled with car chases, stunt-work, physical brawls, and firearm fights within urban neighborhoods and oftentimes, inside warehouses. Moreover, action films regularly feature male leads with a younger female love interest, as the hero navigates the villain’s strategic responses. But the film goes beyond the archetypal male hero that stereotypically constitutes the action genre. With Leonor, Escobar features a grandmother as the main character caught between two filmic worlds.
Si Ritz at Wesley sakay ng motor. Still mula sa direktor.
Iniinugan ng pelikulang Bula sa Langit (Sheenly Gener, 2022) ang suson-susong danas ng kasaglitang nagdidikta sa buhay ng sundalong si Wesley Villanueva (Gio Gahol). Tubong Calamba, Laguna, kabilang siya sa ipinagbubunying puwersa ng militar na nakagapi sa pinakamatataas na pinuno ng Maute na siyang nagpasiklab ng madugong digmaan sa Marawi. Waring nakasandig sa pinakapalasak na talinghagang kakikitaan ng salitang ‘bula’ na ibinibida ng pamagat— “naglaho na parang bula”—nahahagip ng pelikula ang posibleng kalagayan ng mga sundalong pinagkakalooban ng pagkakataong umuwi sa kani-kanilang mahal sa buhay na kailangang may kahandaan na muling lumisan sa isang iglap upang panghawakan ang misyong mapitagang iginagawad sa kanila ng pamahalaan.
Daud and Marco looks out from the cave. Still from Topografia (Mangansakan, 2022).
Halfway through Gutierrez Mangansakan II’s Topografia (2022), the movie quietly bares itself for what it is, cunnningly instructing the audience how to look at its unfolding. In a street in urban Mindanao, washing their fingers over the husks of durians they just finished, Marco (Jess Mendoza) and his editor (Perry Dizon) suddenly begins to talk about cinema. After being prodded by the editor whether he really wants to become a news reporter, and after trying to elude the question by saying that he generally likes to tell stories anyway, Marco admits that he actually dreams of becoming a filmmaker and of writing scripts for movies. In fact, he even completed an entire manuscript for what could be his first full-length feature. But nevermind, his tone suggests, as he thinks that the script is still amateurish in its attempt. And so, Marco wondered out loud, smiling sheepishly now, should he attend one of those scriptwriting workshops taught by Ricky Lee? Or perhaps by Moira Lang? His editor, however, simply dismisses his diffidence, offering instead a crucial reminder to Marco, and inevitably, to the one beholding the film: Walang katotohanan ang pelikula. Iyan ay kathang-isip lang. Escape kumbaga. Marco could then only agree: stories, after all, are all the same. Who could even say that truth, in and of itself, is not a story of its own?
For its 33rd Annual Citations for Distinguished Achievement in Film, the Young Critics Circle Film Desk is honored to have Dr. Flaudette May Datuin of the Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines as the keynote speaker.
Prof. Datuin wrote numerous publications in national and international publications. Her first book on Filipina Artists in the Visual Arts from the nineteenth century to the 90s (Home Body Memory) emerged from her engagement with women artists in the Philippines and Asia. From her research on women artists in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea and Japan (through grants from the Asian Public Intellectuals and the Asian Scholarship Foundation, Japan Foundation Asia Center, among others), she curated and organized exhibitions and forums, among them Women Imaging Women (1996-1997), trauma, interrupted (2006-2007), and Nothing to Declare (2010-2011).
Datuin’s current research and pedagogical interests include gender issues in the arts, art and ecology, and art and healing. In her most recent writings and engagements, she is veering towards interdisciplinary method and pedagogy. She has founded a team that teaches an interdisciplinary course on Disaster Risk Mitigation, Adaptation and Preparedness Strategies (DRMAPS) based at the UP College of Engineering. As scholar in residence in LaSalle-SIA, Singapore, and through her keynote addresses at the University of Sydney and University of Melbourne in 2019, she discussed problems of art historical methods and how art history, criticism and curation can contribute and respond to broader and urgent concerns, where the earth— as seen in the ongoing health and ecological crises—is reaching, if not already, its tipping point in the context of environmental disequilibria on a planetary scale.
Join us at the @UP Vargas Museum on November 10, 2023 at 3:00 PM for the awards ceremony. If you’d like to participate in the event, please register at this link: tinyurl.com/2022films.
We are grateful for the support of the University of the Philippines-Diliman Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts (@UP Diliman OICA) for making this event possible.
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Poster image from Batsoy (2022) by Roland Espinosa Batallon
Batsoy (dir. Ronald Espinosa Batallones) opens with an aerial shot of San Dionisio, a coastal town in Ilo-ilo, whose littoral space is surrounded by Mt. Mahapnag and a lush vegetation of what can prematurely be called edenic. Then, the camera fixes its gaze on two siblings Toto (Sean Ethan Sotto) and Nonoy (Markko Cambas) who were busy collecting twigs and branches for firewood amid the midday heat of the sun. The screen’s texture and gradient, in its goal to assert a filmic period, seemingly tames this debilitating heat yet a banter between the two brothers reminds us that their bodies were persisting in a kind of labor that is far from idyllic. Rushed into the expectations of adulthood, Toto assures his younger brother, Nonoy, that after a day’s work they will have something to eat. Nonoy licks his lips and wishfully imagines what could possibly be that food. After which, the screen cuts to the endless thicket of trees that affords a child’s mind to meander beyond their sordid reality.
Ang sabihin na sadyang walang katuturan ang mga palabas sa Vivamax sapagkat pareho’t parehas lang naman umaapaw sa kalaswaan ay tunay na isang malaking kahangalan. Umaalingasaw dito, kung hihiramin ang isang kritiko, ang imahinaryong kapangyarihan na tigib sa kapalaluan. Sa madaling sabi, paano titimbangin ang taas at laki? Subalit kailangang linawin din naman na hindi sinasabing hindi problematiko ang kabi-kabilang produksiyon ng sex sa kasalukuyan lalo na kung idadamay pa ang pagbulusok ng mga karanasan sa internet sa mahaba’t maigsing panahon ng pandemya. Tinitiyak lang na mas masalimuot pa sa minamadaling paghuhusga ang usaping ito sa kontemporanyong pinilakang tabing na nagtutulak upang baliktanawin ang tila paglubog at paglitaw ng genre hindi lamang sa kasaysayan ng sineng Filipino, na siyang diumano ay bumubuhay sa industriyang patuloy pa rin ang pakikipagsapalaran, kundi sa lipunan at kulturang patuloy ang pakikipaglaban sa kung ano pa rin ang dapat, angkop, at wasto. Maaaring sa pagkaumay o sa pagmamadali ay mabalewala ang negosasyon ng pelikulang Kitty K7 (Joy Aquino, 2022) na mula sa pagbuo at pagbuno ng mga babaeng manlilikha sa bakuran ng industriya ay nakapagpapasilip sa pagtatangka na makahanap ng solusyon ang tauhan at ang pelikula sa suliranin ng nagbabagong kapaligiran ng mga gawaing seksuwal sa kasalukuyan.
The trouble with some countries is that some of its men believe they are good. Or so Lav Diaz has been telling us. No matter how hard they strive for the truth, how valiantly they fight a systemic hydra, they are ultimately contaminated—a sickness that doesn’t seem to have a cure, save for immolation.
In the last two decades, Diaz has shown variations on the tainted man in a series of exigently long features, his panoramas of brooding, searching men imprisoned in their own words—or wordlessness—these anti-heroes who are either hyper-discursive or frustratingly inarticulate; there’s hardly any middle ground. They begin as solitary detectives, at times even of their own future crimes, trying to find equilibrium in a terrain that is both idyllic and nastily punitive. At some point in their journey, they find themselves about to fall off the precipice of their towering conscience. Ultimately, they spiral into ruination.
Andrea Anne Trinidad, John Bengan, and Skilty Labastilla
11, 103
The full-length documentary 11,103, co-directed by Mike Alcazaren (Puti, 2013) and Jeannette Ifurung (Marcos, the Fall of a Dictator, 2012) masterfully weaves together the individual stories of survivors within the context of Republic Act 10368 (an act providing for reparation and recognition of human rights violations during the Marcos Regime, documentation of said violations, appropriating funds therefor and for other purposes). The documentary takes a wide-reaching approach, considering the experiences of various sectors, including doctors, Muslims, members of the church, and more, hailing from different corners of the Philippines. The diverse storytelling methods employed, combining traditional sit-down interviews, intricate scene illustrations, and actual visits to the locations where the memorable events unfolded are commendable. The seamless narrative transitions from the filing of then-Presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos’s certificate of candidacy, the campaign, the victory, and the inauguration are also well-crafted.
In terms of being a record and reckoning, this documentary is more comprehensive than most. However, it still adheres to a somewhat conventional and predictable approach.
Stills from 11, 103 Official Trailer (Mike Alcazaren and Jeannette Ifurung, 2022)
Blue Room
Blue Room, the debut feature of Ma-an Asuncion-Dagñalan that premiered in Cinemalaya, is a film that delves into issues that we are already familiar with, such as the police involvement in drug planting and the subsequent “performance” of a high-ranking official who turns a blind eye to it. The film interestingly brings together two levels of chaos: that of the band and that of the police. The band’s night spirals into chaos due to a dispute between former lovers, and later on, the police also get entangled in a mess due to a mistaken arrest involving the ex-general’s grandchild.
The film features well-executed shots, especially during the initial interrogation scene. The scene in the police vehicle, where chaos ensues as they attempt an escape plan, stands out due to the tension built by the claustrophobia.
Still from TBA Blue Room Trailer (Ma-an Asuncion-Dagñalan, 2022)
Juan Karlos delivers a solid performance, and the other characters in the ensemble complement each other well. The camaraderie among the youth feels natural and engaging, making it a youth-oriented movie that firmly questions the authoritarian and corrupt regime.
Still from TBA Blue Room Trailer (Ma-an Asuncion-Dagñalan, 2022)
There’s an attempt to critique these events throughout the film, with Elijah Canlas’s character and the various baggage carried by the other characters. However, this critique feels somewhat lacking. It seems like there was an effort to comment on various aspects of the film, but it falls short, as it appears to be only a tough lesson for privileged young individuals to learn. It lacks the true grit needed to make a significant impact, concluding with a sense of helplessness. Despite this, Blue Room deserves recognition for its technical merits.
Family Matters
Family Matters, written by Mel Mendoza-Del Rosario (Sana Maulit Muli, 1995) and directed by Nuel Naval (Miracle in Cell No. 7, 2019) presents a justifiable script that genuinely explores the unique stories and characters of each family member. It skillfully weaves together the characteristics of various types of families, seamlessly integrating them into the larger family unit. The exchange of lines between the characters, especially during family gatherings, is smooth and effectively utilizes the camera.
Still from Family Matters Trailer (Nuel Naval, 2022)
However, the film is quite generous to its audience, especially in scenes that emphasize the differences between Ellen (Nikki Valdez) and her Fil-Am boyfriend, the contrast between Fortune’s (Mylene Dizon) chaotic and clingy family versus her brother’s more composed and individualistic family, and the sweet but clingy elderly couple compared to the practical dynamics of the brother and his wife.
Still from Family Matters Trailer (Nuel Naval, 2022)
One can’t help but notice Ellen’s frequent trips to the grocery store, which becomes a recurring motif in the film. The message of “we must disconnect in order to connect” is emphasized, particularly concerning one family facing this particular issue.
There is an opportunity to highlight the star potential and overall role of Liza Lorena as a mother and wife, but it often revolves around the specific issue faced by the family’s patriarch.
While the film tends to underestimate the intelligence of its viewers at times, making its themes and messages overly explicit, Family Matters offers a well-crafted exploration of family dynamics, providing a fair and balanced portrayal of the various family types and the issues they encounter.
Still from Family Matters Trailer (Nuel Naval, 2022)
Nanahimik ang Gabi
In Nanahimik ang Gabi, Shugo Praico manages to craft an interesting enough thriller involving a kept woman and a police officer (ably portrayed by Heaven Peralejo and Ian Veneracion, respectively). The film’s striking visuals, though at times too on-the-nose, set the mood for what looked to be an engaging narrative at the start but unfortunately becomes marred with indulgently long scenes that ironically dissipates, instead of builds, tension.
Stills from Nanahimik ang Gabi- Official Trailer (Shugo Praico, 2022)
Praico also falls into the male gaze trap, employed by many straight male Filipino directors as a shortcut to eliciting empathy for their attractive lead female characters, when more layered characterization could have been more effective. The “good for her” genre, depicting female empowerment by subjecting them to violence and having them triumph in the end is becoming a tired trope, especially when directed by straight men with male gaze tendencies.
Still from Nanahimik ang Gabi- Official Trailer (Shugo Praico, 2022)
The technical craftsmanship and the attempt to comment on police brutality are commendable, but there is a need for a more nuanced and less predictable storytelling.
Still mula sa trailer ng Bula sa Langit (dir. Sheenley Gener).
Para sa ikapitong episode ng Young Critics Circle Podcast, pag-uusapan nina Aris Atienza, John Bengan, at Skilty Labastilla, kasama si Anne Trinidad, ang nagsipagwagi sa ika-33 Circle Citations: 12 Weeks (dir. Anna Isabelle Matutina), Leonor Will Never Die (dir. Martika Ramirez Escobar), at Bula sa Langit (dir. Sheenly Gener).
Young Critics Circle Film Desk 