Janus Isaac Nolasco
What does a genre—which trades on kilig, hugot heartaches—have to do with inequality, poverty, human rights, and authoritarianism? If Filipino romance movies barely register on the political scale, one would be hard-pressed to see the genre—generally at least—as anything but politically progressive. But this is misleading. They do not have to literally depict, say, patronage politics, to engage it productively.
There is little explicit political content in Alone/Together, Ulan, and Isa Pa, With Feelings, three films longlisted by the Young Critics Circle for 2019. But they critique hierarchical, patron-client relations; espouse equality; and embrace the liberal democratic values of individualism and self-determination.
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Alone/Together starts off with a political bang. Christine Lazaro (Liza Soberano) launches a monologue on Juan Luna’s Spoliarium, talks about colonial history, and speaks of historical remembering. There are references to art serving the people, or to art as free and liberating, yet the film largely ends up as a story of personal redemption.
Christine is an art studies major who dreams of becoming a museum director. But her plan to “change the world” falls apart when she is implicated in a case of estafa. Her boss had been stealing from the company, but she did not speak out even though she knew what was happening. At the same time, she breaks up with Rafael Toledo (Enrique Gil), and ends up working as an assistant to Greg Fausto (Adrian Alandy). The rest of the film charts her return to the art world, where she had become a pariah.
That Christine Lazaro failed to realize her career plans, she is told, does not mean that she herself is a failure. “You can always make your own dreams,” her professor says in consolation. Years after they split up, Rafael tells her not to focus on who she was, but on who she should be. “Do it for yourself,” Christine’s mom advises.
This is standard self-help fare. But this is precisely why Alone/Together is so political. In her quest for self-fulfillment, she struggles against powerlessness and dependence. When she tells her boyfriend and employer, Greg Fausto (Adrian Alandy), that she wants to work again in the art world, he says that she “can’t stand on her own.” Christine decides to quit and end the relationship.
“Ayoko na. I want out….Tama na, it’s over…. You saved me, I served you… …You support me, but not enough to make me fly…I am a child, but why do I feel so old? Hindi ko na kilala ang sarili ko….I should be dreaming, conquering the world.…But I built my life, career my dreams around you…”
Christine’s relationship with Greg—one of dependence, inferiority, and infantilization—typifies hierarchical, patron-client relations in Philippine society. Greg is Christine’s literal patron; he saved her from a legal predicament, and gave her a job when no one else would. She served him out of utang na loob. Like Christine, many Filipinos are (made) subordinate to, and dependent on, the wealthy and the powerful. Even outside this political clientelism, communal norms dominate, and militate against autonomy or a full-blown, American-style individualism.
Of course, the prevalence of communalism and individualism will vary depending on, say, social class or even income level, and may even co-exist in communities and individuals. Generally speaking, the Philippines scores low on an individualism index, but rated high in terms of hierarchy. Speaking up, not least dissent, is frowned upon. Subordinates—children, citizens, and employees—are told, “Sumunod na lang kayo,” while rebellious youth often hear variations of “habang nasa pamamahay kita, ako masusunod.” One commentator writes of “toxic Filipino culture,” wherein,
The hierarchical structures of our families also make our relationships feel a lot less democratic. It is considered rebellion to speak up and voice an opinion toward an elder; submission to patriarchs is an expectation. Laughably, it is bad manners for children to talk back to parents, but the same is true when we are dead silent.
Many Filipinos anchor their identities on their families, who supply the primary rationale for, say, their careers or even marriage partners. Consider also those who venture abroad just to send money to their families, or are obligated to sacrifice their own plans to provide long-term assistance to a sibling or a relative. There is little incentive to strike out on one’s own. For instance, remittances generate a culture of “dependence” (p.32) that discourages other family members in the Philippines from seeking work.
Alone/Together flies in the face of this culture, and champions autonomy and self-determination. Christine breaks up with Greg, pursues her dreams, and starts anew. And to drive home her independence, she ends up single, even as the final scene teases the possibility of getting back together with Rafael. At any rate, it’s not surprising that Christine is an artist. For Romanticism in the 18th and 19th centuries, art was a space of freedom.
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If romance films in the past generally had a happy ending, their recent incarnations do not. In Ulan (2019, directed by Irene Villamor), Maya (Nadine Lustre) finds her true love, Peter (Carlo Aquino), but is denied by the heavens. This tragedy is framed through a refreshing homage to Philippine folklore. Needless to say, traditional beliefs on rain abound. Putting eggs outdoors can persuade the heavens to stall the downpour. When rain falls even when the sun is shining, it means two tikbalangs are getting married. But it also signifies the gods’ disapproval.
Maya as a young girl witnesses such a marriage, and speaks with the two tikbalangs about love conquering all, a belief she carries into adulthood. She is, however, unlucky in her relationships, all of which ended while or because it was raining. This leads her to hate weddings, to give up on love, and to believe she is cursed.
In Ulan, Folklore imposes its logic on, and mirror, the events in Maya’s life. If her relationships end because of rain, she is by extension a tikbalang whose love affairs the heavens frown upon. Just when she and Peter are about to end up—finally—together, a storm kills him off. Peter had left the church—he was a seminarian—a rejection of a powerful institution for which he too was punished, even if he said, “Malakas ako kay Lord.” Similarly, if a typhoon represents a lost love and the rage of a woman betrayed, Maya fits the bill; she too has lost Peter and has reason to lash out. Speaking to a tikbalang after his death, she expresses her anger and disillusionment. If love supposedly conquers all, why, she asks, did she never end up with Peter?
Folklore in Ulan represents an all-powerful order that determines the fate of individuals. It decides whom one can love, and punishes any transgression. One could reasonably expect that after Peter’s death, Maya would take her fate lying down. But like her indifference to the lesson on the water cycle, she never gives up on love, an affirmation symbolized by the film’s final sequence. Maya meets her younger self, and both jump and down happily in the rain, all in Matrix-like slow motion.
The scene expresses her self-affirmation, and her defiance of the gods in the face of personal tragedy. While there is no storming the heavens or overturning the divine order, love in Ulan is nevertheless a form of resistance, a Kierkegaardian commitment to one’s self. An individual subject to the gods resonates politically. The powers-that-be in the real world also shape our fate, but like Maya, we can always push back. Ulan affirms the self and champions it—a la liberal democracy—against an all-powerful order.
At the same time, Maya’s attitude to love changes. In one scene, she muses that people are often advised to save some for themselves when they enter a relationship. She realizes, however, that even if she loves, she will never lose anything. Love here is as infinite as the power of the heavens. This actually fulfills Peter’s wish for an inexhaustible love, an omnipresence to rival that of the divine order.
Such boundlessness overturns a self-debasing, martyr-like loving found in unequal, hierarchical relationships. In Maya’s case, she was enslaved to love—in love with the idea of love, as her friend Topi (Josef Elizalde) remarked. But in and through Peter, she discovers a more expansive notion of the phenomenon, one that preserves and enriches her individuality. Here, love is no longer self-emptying.
This is all part of Maya’s transformation. From a self-absorbed, love-obsessed woman, she now helps street children, reading them stories and writing a children’s book. The change empowers her, and reverses her disillusionment. Through volunteer work, she actively reaches out to others and finds new meaning in life. If, before, she could not write a sexy, romance narrative (she works at a publishing firm), she later pens what “her heart really wants”: a children’s book about a little girl and tikbalangs. For the new Maya, love is no longer (just) about eros but (also) about agape. No longer enslaved to an fantasy of love, she finds freedom, meaning and happiness in civic engagement and beyond the standard happily-ever-after. As we shall see below, this championing of singlehood, as well as the frustration of fairy-tale endings, is implicitly connected to the values of liberal democracy.
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Unlike the two films above, Isa Pa, With Feelings has an unequivocally happy ending. Gali Pastrano (Carlo Aquino), a deaf, and Mara Navarro (Maine Mendoza), who is of hearing, end up together. Raising awareness of the difficult lives of the deaf, the film offers an inspirational story of how to overcome seemingly irreconcilable differences. More importantly, it projects love as a relationship between equals, and rejects the kind that is based on hierarchy and one-sided dependence. Because of his condition and bitter experiences, Gali cannot accept that Mara’s love for him is genuine. He can only imagine that their relationship is built only on pity and convenience. This we learn from the film’s dramatic confrontation scene.
A flashback explains why his previous relationship with Annica (Arci Muñoz) also broke down. It was tainted not just by an insecurity that Annica would leave, but also by his expectation that she serve and cater to his needs, not least that she sign for him when they have company. “Yaya mo ba ako?” Annica says. Theirs was an unequal relationship, and Gali felt that his condition—his vulnerability—demanded that she treat him that way.
Realizing his mistake, he tries (and succeeds) to make up with Mara. He admits he loves her, but still feels that it is not right, wishes that he were of hearing too, and fears that Mara will eventually grow tired of him and the inevitable misunderstandings. To which she simply responds, “Then I’ll be deaf for you.”
This entails some sacrifice on the woman’s (again?!) part, but the line also symbolizes their equality and their shared vulnerability, on which their relationship is reconstructed. Gali and Mara are not yaya and amo, but equals, and this is constitutive of their love for one another. Indeed, in God Still Matters, the Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe writes,
Love, then, is between equals. To love is to give to another not possessions or any such good thing. It is to give yourself, which means providing a space in which the other can be himself or herself. Love is rather rare and comes with maturity when we can get away from the need to be dominant or to find another who is not dominant.
To stress the point, Isa Pa, With Feelings has them dancing at the recital, showcasing the trust and mutuality required of any healthy relationship, romantic or otherwise. Indeed, throughout the film, they help each other. Gali risks his life to help Mara when she was locked out of her apartment. She in turn installs a Christmas lights-doorbell system to alert him if someone’s at the door.
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Many romance films today work with and around common themes, are commercially driven, and largely eschew political engagement. The Juan Luna monologue in Alone/Together, or the jarring allegory (“Pilipinas!”) in Ulan, which seek to temper this apolitical thrust, seem rare in the genre. At any rate, the attempts feel out of sync with each film’s largely personal themes.
At any rate, the profit motive does not preclude these movies from engaging social issues. Nor should they have explicit political references to do so. On the contrary, it is precisely because of their treatment of love that romantic films are most political. That the same themes recur could be cause for lament or snobbery, but it’s also an invitation to see the perennial problems that romantic movies address. What makes kilig and hugot so relevant, relatable, and profitable?
These films emerged alongside, and to some extent, resonate with, broader shifts in Philippine society: the decline of marriages, the increase in the number of single Filipinos and of one-person households, the rise of social media as a vehicle for self-expression, the popularity of self-care and adulting, changes in gender norms and the “family value system”, the expansion of the service sector, and most importantly, perhaps, the emergence of a young, educated, urban middle-class (millennials), who represent the market of such films.
Like Christine in particular, millennials live by the values of self-determination, self-empowerment, and self-discovery. “Comprising 35 percent of the Philippine population,” says one article, they are now “a driving force in the economy.” It must be said, however, that things are not as rosy for all millennials. For many of them are unemployed or earn so little.
But whatever the extent of these trends, the values espoused in romance films do clash with traditional values of Philippine society, which were outlined above: the respect for hierarchy, the perpetuation of dependence, and lack of a full-blown individualism. The struggles and subsequent transformations of Christine, Maya, and Gali embody these tensions, and reflect a society caught between conflicting value systems.
Each film negotiates, and situates itself within, this tension in its own way. Collectively though, they invite audiences to think about—and reimagine—the basis of their relationships. How do I view gender roles? What are my expectations of love? How would my relationships—not just love affairs— look like outside hierarchy, inequality, and a one-sided dependence?
Needless to say, answering these questions involves pain and loss. And that, I suppose, helps explain why the films elicit so much hugot and feels. Far from limited to kilig, they draw on deeper social issues, and are highly cathartic, especially for their target market, for doing so. They make for a different level of hugot, as it were.
Christine Lazaro’s story in Alone/Together illustrates the enormity of these transitions. The trip to New York—especially with the Central Park scene with Rafael—represents a turning point in her transformation. The Big Apple epitomizes her dreams, and serves as a space where Christine is (temporarily) free from the relationship that ties her down. New York rekindles her passion for art, and she almost gets back together with Rafael. However, having glimpsed her freedom, she rationalizes her relationship with Greg, denies her feelings for Raf, and seems keen to settle for her current life. He calls her a coward, and she argues back: it also takes bravery to accept her fate. Christine does pull through, but clearly not after much drama.
Through these difficult transformations, romance films point to the still-powerful pull of tradition, of the past, of old values. But they also drag the characters—and the audiences—through the tortuous emergence of the liberal democratic subject: autonomous but of equal standing with others, single yet self-determining. This, incidentally, is why many romantic movies of late have abandoned happy endings. Audiences are certainly more jaded today, but liberal democracy demands singlehood.
Alone/Together and Ulan dangle the possibility of Rafael and Christine, or Maya and Peter, ending up together (again), only to frustrate the expectation. This formal shift in the genre mirrors a difficult social transition. It’s tempting to stay in the past, or to insist on happily-ever-after.
But if romance films today frustrate expectations of a happy ending, they force Christine and Maya to be single and free, and compel Gali to reconstruct his relationship with Mara. All of the characters abandon, or at least reckon with their past. But the present and future beckon, too. The bittersweet endings of Alone/Together, Ulan, and Isa Pa, With Feelings signify a fresh start, a new hope, which, allegorically speaking, the Philippines deserves, but which it must first embrace.
Change of course requires more than personal transformations. But while it’s easy to dismiss romance films for their lack of direct political resonance, they are engaged, and embody the end goal of social transformation. If all of us seek change, it’s because we want a society where everyone—like Christine Lazaro—is free to pursue their dreams and fulfill their potential. It’s a vision resonates with Marx’s Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts, even if he did not exactly put it in those terms.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the 30th Annual Circle Citations for Distinguished Achievement in Film for 2019 is now scheduled on the first quarter of 2021 as a virtual event. The list of nominated and winning films can be found here. Reviews for these films, as well as other long-listed films, will be posted this week.
Young Critics Circle Film Desk 