Achieved

There’s a gag in 100 where Eugene Dominggo and the dying Mylene Dizon was having an Ate Vi movie marathon, being one of the 100-something things the best friends would do before Mylene dies. Someday, there would be a film, a comedy maybe, that would have the same gag, a remake of 100 why not, that would have the characters do a Eugene Dominggo movie marathon which will definitely include her latest, the Chris Martinez-written and directed Here Comes the Bride. Bride will be special and memorable because in one of those surprising and pleasant instances of scene stealership, somebody in the same film as Eugene D gets to steal the show and this one time, it’s Angelica Panganiban, who does one of the funniest, most convincing babaeng bakla roles ever.

In the 90s a daring acting career move would involve shedding a starlet’s clothes off for major Seiko Films/OctoArts film project. Seiko Films don’t do films now, sadly, which meant that starlets now only have FHM as a means to announce their Daring Career Move. It’s much different though for smarter artistas, Angelica Panganiban being one of those smart ones. In the film, she’s daring alright but not in the way that Abby Viduya was when she did major vaginal flashing in Sutla. Angelica Panganiban did a lighter version of that sort of role in Santa Santita where she did a much ballyhooed, major torrid smoochfest with Jericho Rosales. And that was mostly it. In Here, she’s still ‘daring’ and so game, she uses her assets to great comedic effect, unafraid to make fun of herself as as she should. Her gayspeak is so flawless and so natural. What makes her so special  I think is that she’s always been a careful articulator of words, something the likes of Kim Chiu would maybe want to learn. She’s not too mannered a performer that when she says spluk, epek, wit and aura, immortal entries in the gay webster, it’s never hindered by self-consciousness, that they might come off too exaggerated because aren’t gays who speak these always exaggerated. And if her TV show Rubi is any indication, Angelica has an all natural fag hag aura. Not that that’s effortless (maybe it is) but she’s always been the type of performer who examines her roles that certain tics and mannerisms never seem phoned in.

But it’s not just The Angelica Panganiban Show. Eugene is stellar as usual. Her spastic attorney is too broad to be really funny but that’s never been a detriment to what she can do to make any role laugh out loud funny. The bonggang-bonggang bougainvillea and scramble is yummy scenes are enough to meet her funny quota but her top billage in this assures she gets to do more, the major one being those parts where she does the pa-girl bride to be whose softiness fits well with her as usual unmatched comedic gift, one that lets her pull off any character, that lets her switch seamlessly from being a spaz to a softy. In a thankfully restrained role, John Lapus is able to throw in a performance that never for a moment seemed cartoonish, having to do a dirty old man role, something that is a stretch for his usually shrill gay roles. The veteran Jaime Fabregas, who you always see as a weak, rich old man, puts a twist on the sickly DOM role and so funnily pulls of all the other personas, all 4 of them. The underrated Tuesday Vargas gets to shine too, and with this cast at that, equally impressive as a yaya-turned-feisty lawyer. Her reciting the  labor laws to her erstwhile bosses is one of the film’s funniest scenes and it is for roles like this that stars are sometimes made of.

Chris Martinez does it again with this film which will rank among his best, all 3 of them, what with his cutely executed character introductions in the beginning, Angelica as the pa-tweetums bride to be, John Lapus as the just heartbroken ‘image-stylist’, Jaime Fabregas as the horny-frail wedding financier, Tuesday Vargas as the oppressed and bullied Bisaya yaya, and Eugene Dominggo as the Miriam Defensor Santiago-like, old maid attorney, an impeccably assembled ensemble cast who worked off of each others’ roles, as the story demanded, a body-switch tale that will go down in history as one of the best body-switch movies ever made. Bride will be known as one of the best comedies ever made period. But isn’t it a little too obvious already to pronounce Chris Martinez films, Chris Martinez things as one of the best ever whatever when they’re made available for public consumption? He’s only made 3, all of which I personally consider masterpieces and that’s certainly not enough.

Don’t you just love how Martinez treats his audience as a thinking audience, one that shouldn’t have to be pounded over the head with a gag and be made to understand that that was joke, now laugh, such as in the scene where a beautician sees his fellow beautician having sex with a girl, runs away from the horrific scene and pukes real looking puke. No fancy sped-up effect and no goofy soundtrack to cue us in on the funny thing that just happened. He trusts that we will get it. And how can we not.

Kimmy More!

When Chris Martinez brought us the wonderful 100, we knew it’s only a matter of time before Eugene the great Domingo stars  in a movie of her own. If 100 wasn’t such a good movie itself, we’d have clamored for another Eugene movie. But Martinez’ film debut was great and it filled a void. Months (or was it years) passed and still no sign of Eugene in the big screen. So we go and see those that has her as supporting player in movies like ITALY (I Trust & Love You), Tanging Ina Nyong Lahat and Ploning. But these movies are NOT great and Eugene can only do SO MUCH. She may be a terrific actress but she can’t single-handedly and magically turn crap into cinema greats. She’s human too.

And then Facebook resurfaced as the premiere social networking site and we suddenly have the means to stalk our divas and rock stars. It provided a platform for announcing our fanaticism for something and anything and so we hurriedly Become a Fan of the great actress of our time. And through this formidable medium we got a  glimpse of a great movie in the making called Kimmy Dora, Kambal sa Kyeme. Finally, redemption! Eugene will have a movie out and it looks like she would play twins! Not only was there going to be a Eugene movie, it’s going to be a Eugene movie written by Chris Martinez and set to star two Eugenes. Orgasm.

In the movie, Miss Eugene plays Kimmy, the acerbic and poisonous boss of Go Dong Hae Corp, and the twin Dora, the adorable half-twit who effortlessly elicits the affection of people and their mogul dad played with uncorny enthusiasm by Ariel Ureta. Kimmy is the fitness buff, the over-achieving Go Dong Hae daughter who is the family’s brains and allegedly, beauty. But the unassuming Dora is the twin who manages to get the adoration of the dad and the office hunk Johnson (Dingdong Dantes) without ever having to do so much. This and the fact that Dora is the exact opposite of her gets on Kimmy’s nerves and her hatred towards the half-retarded sister is only magnified by their father’s decision to bestow only a margin of his estate to her while Dora gets the bulk. The unputdownable Kimmy is unhappy so she confers with an equally evil colleague played by Baron Geisler. Things go out of hand when Baron’s character mistakenly hears from their phone conversation certain instructions that are actually intended for the house ipis, that is, ‘paluin ng tsinelas, tapakan, at itapon sa malayo’ the clueless Dora. Trouble and endless parade of funnies then ensue when Baron calls for the kidnapping of Dora to execute what actually is an ipis plan.

The movie is mostly character-driven, not heavily relying on plot to move things forward, but when you have Eugene as your star, that is probably the best way to go about it. In Kimmy, the action is relegated to the reliable shoulders of Eugene Domingo and she doesn’t disappoint even though there’s hardly any action. In typical Pinoy comedy, action here happens in the kidnapping scenes which call for the escape plans,  police chases, and the inevitable jail scene. Sadly but not despairingly, not much of the plot works and towards the end, the resolution feels a bit rushed and it didn’t make much sense that the police knew where the kidnapped was taken to because even though Dora, the intended victim, could have wormed the information out of Baron, she is clearly not too sharp to do it and the movie doesn’t even show that she tried. But what the movie lacked in plot movement, it more than made up for great characterizations, even those who are in scenes for not more than 10 minutes. Chris Martinez is after all, more adept at developing complex, interesting characters. And in this, he made plenty.

If I haven’t emphasized it quite enough, let me just say again, Eugene Domingo is a great, magnificent, and super good actress. When she speaks lines like ‘Najejebs ako!’ in a retarded fashion as definitely called for by the script, prepare to die laughing. You’d also die in her other scenes, such as the ones in the office where she terrorizes her co-workers and Johnson, specifically by doing a Sharon-Stone-in-Basic-Instinct leg-crossing minus the crotch-flashing bit, the Julia-Roberts-in-Notting-Hill swimming pool scene (there is no such scene in Notting Hill) where she asks for the very pogi Johnson to love a floating girl, scenes with the katulong who very funnily calls her ate Kemmy and ate Dura, the ones with Zanjoe Marudo where she bitches for every inconvenience she experiences, basically in each and every scene she’s in. The days of Eugene Domingo stealing scenes from her supporting roles is over at least for now.

Although not burdened by the numerous cameos of stars, one had to wonder why this had to be.  Maybe they didn’t trust her enough to carry the movie on her own and that it’s necessary to have some super famous celebrities turn up in certain scenes? That would have been a wrong assumption as the movie is All Eugene. Or maybe it’s a stroke of brilliance. We don’t get to see a lot of that in Pinoy movies and it’s quite fun to see the likes of, well, just see for yourself on September 2 when the movie officially opens which big stars show up.

The bevy of ‘stars’ in the supporting cast actually did good and they were quite enough if there ever was concern about the lack of Major Big Stars. Take Dingdong Dantes for example, a pogi actor who was good and believable as a hunk who’d fall for a dork like Dora. What makes his performance good is that he doesn’t seem too self-aware in the tradition of good-looking actors who maintain expressions that seem to pander to the idea that they’re pogi playing the lovestruck hunk pining for the unattractive character (not actress, take note). Also of note is Ariel Ureta who does not resort to the cartoonish Chinese billionaire depiction, also in the tradition of billionaire Chinese dads in movies who feel like they have to speak with a Ching-chongese accent to put the message across that they’re playing a Chinoy businessman. And who could forget the katulong who, in her maybe 8 minute scenes managed to be unforgettable? Martinez and his casting troupe know talent where they see one. The Kimmy katulong reminds me of Me-anne, the 100 katulong. Miriam Quiambao, Baron Geisler, Zanjoe Marudo, all pretty actors managed to not just look good but hold up their own beside The Great Actress.

Kimmy Dora is the first feature film of a newly established firm, Spring Films  and supposedly the first time a press screening was held for a local movie. It is also the first starring role for Eugene Domingo and boy, what a way to start. For now, those of us who slobber over Eugene movies have this to feed us for the meantime. In the press screening, one can sense a certain asking tone from the producers and understandably so because we’re not likely to see the trailer in those two local channels of ours who are affiliates of major film studios, Viva and Star Cinema who make sure that when their movies are to be launched, we’re reminded one freaking month ahead of the showing dates. The promotion and marketing for Kimmy Dora will probably largely depend on good word-of-mouth and Facebook and maybe Twitter and that might not be enough and that would be a shame because Kimmy, while not perfect, is largely better than the song lines-titled romances we’ve been getting since forever. I guess all I’m saying is if you can sense a future aching for another Eugene movie or maybe even a Chris Martinez movie, go see this and die just a little.

Fast, sharp

When he was 13, Augusten Burroughs wanted to become a beauty empire owner. Not considerably crazy for a gay boy growing in an American suburb. But consider that after walking in on his mother’s own homosexual activity, i.e. being eaten from the waist down by a minister’s wife, he still maintained civility towards the person as if he hadn’t seen her eating his mother’s pussy. At 13, he was out of school and was forced to live with his mother’s psychiatrist whose own family could compete with his in the competition of crazies, where 28-year old sisters affectionately address each other as ‘cunt’ and ‘fucking cunt’. He lived in an almost loveless home where he was forced to play the role of a 13-year old adult who has to be parented by 30-year old juveniles. Practically everything about his childhood is crazy, exactly the stuff of good and unforgettable memoirs.

Augusten Burroughs’ Running With Scissors has the same familiar ‘poor me’ kind of subtext that’s prevalent in most memoirs, which is often just an excuse to develop conflict in some boring writer or some mad celebrity’s exercise in megalomania. But Burroughs, you can tell from the easy manner by which he relates his first blow job, a lumberjack-sized man’s attempt to rape his ass, his countless verbal tussle with his mother and other oddities, does not so much as aim to narrate a Poor Boy’s Struggle With Life as he does aim to capture a very queer and interesting childhood that might unintentionally remind anyone just how very mundane everybody else’s life is.

There’s something suspicious about memoirists that aim to tell the world about their sad, quirky and depressing childhood. Often, it seems as if memoirists that do tell sad, quirky and depressing tales are failed fictionists whose lives lend their work the kind of gravity that wouldn’t otherwise be achieved had they resorted to fiction. But gay memoirists are from an entire universe altogether. Augusten Burroughs recounts his bleak but rather enjoyable and extremely independent life with a welcome pomp, casually narrating his insane childhood and its apparent evils. Running With Scissors makes you want to sit down and detail your own crazy life in an attempt to make sense of where you once pictured yourself to be and where you contentedly or sadly are. Me, I’m in an office cubicle, doing lots of paperwork. A very fun state to be in. But if memoir-making should teach anyobody anything, it’s that it takes nerve, verve and a take-no-shit approach to storytelling which should preempt the guilt that will be brought about by the involvement of people who may or may not like your estimation of them.

When in doubt, it would be best to prevent the itch to pester people with your own memoir. But if you have people around you who say things like, ‘My cunt looks like it’s been brushing its teeth. It’s just foaming at the mouth’, or people in your life who use Freud’s psychosexual stages of development when hurling insults, ‘You’re so oral. You’ll never make it to genital. The best you can hope for is to reach anal’, then pester away. Not surprisingly, some of the characters allegedly disliked the way they were described in the book. If you’d been quoted as saying these lines, you’d be pissed too. You can expect a storyteller to embellish a little, but you can’t expect a good memoirist to alter the truth. Even if you’re actually dumb.

Haunted by Patrick

Getting involved with Bret Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park requires major suspension of disbelief. He warns his reader that whatever is in the book really, as in truly, he is not joking, happened to him. And since American Psycho was amazing, I was all set to believe everything that I was about to read, bullshit or no bullshit. But it was clear from the beginning that Lunar Park, the author’s 5^th novel is going to be an entertainingly made up, but no less fascinating semi-autobiographical take on his rise to literary superstardom and the eventual, if not predictable superfucked-updom.

Patrick Bateman, the character that started it all happens to have a huge fan. It’s a fandom so huge it’s scary. Generally abhorred and excoriated by critics, publishers, women and gay groups, American Psycho (a book I truly like) has become the finest example of how not to develop attachment with a Bret Easton Ellis character. As a group, his characters are bad, soulless people and Patrick Bateman is their poster boy. What’s mildly surprising is how bent Ellis seems on making us believe that Bateman is the work of something else, and in his attempt to prove this he aspired to become a boring, suburban house dad, with minor dalliances with college hotties and coke-sniffing on the side. He was maybe hoping that he, unlike his character has too much of a soul and humanity in him that creating the monster that is Bateman was not entirely his idea. He should not have bothered because as murderous as he is, Patrick Bateman, as are most Patricks, is a wonderful character.

Most of the fun derived from reading the book comes from Ellis’ attempt to relay a series of purportedly true-to-life events with a fictionalized drawing of people he had actually dealt with. He recounts his brief but very scary encounter with the ghosts of his past and with the almost concrete and literal ghosts of the present: the ugly relationship with the dad with whom he mostly based his most famous creation, Patrick Bateman, the bomb of a marriage with actress Jayne Dennis, and the struggle with the embittered son Robby. It’s always amusing to wonder what these people that he ruthlessly used as characters in his fiction, might think of the whole charade. What’s disconcerting about it is that in spite of his unlimited well of storytelling talent, he decides to take on a fantastical arc in exchange for an otherwise plausible and more coherent story. Ellis seems to have a natural knack for telling a scary tale, narrating the ghost episode in the voice of a shaken, although hopelessly high man that if read in the right atmosphere will scare the living shit out of any gullible reader.

As is the case with most established authors, Ellis’ most recent work is sure to attract certain ghosts of its own, one of which would certainly be its incapacity to equal its predecessor’s greatness most of which will be taken up by that great American novel American Psycho. But Ellis, like most of his fiction, has a way of hinting that he’s not all about that shit. Just when you thought it was about something, it turns out that it isn’t (i.e. Psycho wasn’t just about a psycho, Glamorama wasn’t about fashion, etc).

Towards the end of the book, there is a passage, a page and a half-long sentence describing in the manner of a high-strung middle-aged druggie, the process of scattering the ashes of the man he made out to be his father. The story is almost finished and one thinks, ‘Oh, it was just about the way he dealt with his father’s passing and he’s sorry about the unflattering patterning of a maniac character to him. He was maybe atoning for that. Fun book.’ But it’s probably not about that. In attempting to make believe this is a non-fiction, Bret majorly bullshits. That he is a fantastic novel writer, that’s something no one should have trouble believing.

Bodies and brain

Jeffrey Jeturian’s movies are the type that when you see their trailers, you’re not sure if they’re good or bad. (Because really, what unhorny person would have wanted to see Pila Balde or Bridal Shower had there not been any promise of titillation and crassness, which is not to say that these films were very titillating or even remotely crass)? This statement would probably be true before Kubrador was made, the film that swept awards from as far away as Croatia or some crazy country somewhere in Europe. It would probably be true before mass adoration for Kubrador became the phenomenon among film people. But since it is more or less known that he’s one of Philippine cinema’s rock star filmmakers, it seemed necessary that I see his bikini movie Bikini Open.

Cherry Pie Picache is Susan, the chronicler of one of flitdom’s most anticipated events – bikini contests. Having suffered from a ratings clout, her station threatens to shut her off, if she won’t come up with a watchable and grittier episode of her lousy ass, garden variety news features show ‘Isyu Ngayon’. In a move of part-desperation and part-genius, she makes the transition to producing dirtier stuff which was supposed to mark the beginning of a brilliant career.

The mock-documentary style shows the director’s capacity to veer from the kind of conventional comedy filmmaking that is sort of becoming the trend of late – flamboyant, cartoonish and unfunny. Don’t you wish they redo the comedies of the 90s, the kind where there’s a sing and dance episode right smack in the middle of the film? The ones which used to star Manilyn Reynes, Tina Paner, Patrick Guzman, Andrew E, those kind. A throwback of sorts. Zsa-zsa Zaturnnah was semi-lousy.

Bikini is an insightful examination of media’s endless quest to achieve ratings domination which kills TV people’s creativity, something that is probably true of Channels 2 and 7. In this movie, that aim literally kills the anchor. Susan, though kind of flat (she’s mostly just a scheming, ratings-hungry media personality), was amusing in her desperation. Cherry Pie Picache hams it up a bit although at times she seems witless and flat-out bitchy. Francine Prieto, Rafael Rossell, Diana Zubiri, Alfred Vargas and other pretty and probably delicious actors lend very important presence. But semi-unknown JE Sison is the true find here. He’s not corny-looking and it doesn’t hurt that his launching vehicle required him to be in bikini about 90% of the time. My only beef with the movie is the contest’s venue. Although it’s not totally improbable that a special reports program would feature the bikini craze (because it is undoubtedly an interesting subject), a grander setting would have seemed less crazy, like, say, a bikini contest sponsored by an underwear brand, like the true-to-life Mossimo bikini contest. But that would probably be less funny without the stand-up comics. And this one’s funny so it’s a relief Jeturian had smaller ambitions.

As with most sexy comedies, the packaging is often misleading and hopelessly tacky. I mean the posters and the trailers for them are sucky. And I don’t really recall seeing the trailer for this movie, but Bikini Open or any of his films deserve nice trailers. He’s a rock star.

Dead Funny

Identifying with certain crowds is not something we should be doing. Ok, not something I should be doing. But I’ve been going on about certain types of movie-going crowds so why stop now? So, I finally felt at ease with this particular crowd, the kind who saw Apat Dapat, Dapat Apat. They were ok. They were the type who would gleefully smack anyone who dares to smirk at the movie’s crassness.

Four women from the weird side of the tracks, Res, Brite, Dally and Gay are cartoon characters made to appear as humans because really good actors played them. Candy Pangilinan plays the Kenny MacCormack-like Res whose purpose in this movie is to die and be the plot driver. With her are Rufa Mae Quinto as the bimbo undertaker, Eugene Domingo as the loudmouth piano teacher/wife of Christian Vasquez (who is a site in briefs) and Pokwang as the gangly and dancey MMDA officer who is the mother of, if you can believe it, that dude who plays the cute son and the wife of that other dude who plays the cute dad. I like Wenn Deramas’s humor.

The story, which if anybody calls silly or stupid would surely backfire, moves along dizzyingly fast which gives the movie just about the right length to showcase everyone in their comic glory. And if I start to tell just how funny the movie is, I might sound exaggerated myself. Plus consider that Provoq guy Chester Nolledo and that other pretty guy (google them if you must) play Candy Pangilinan’s brother and they often figure in scenes not wearing much. And Kian of PBB, he’s here and he plays a very convincing straight-guy-turned-John Lapuz’s-lover. Who knew that any one of those PBB jerks could be so realistic in any role.

The movie may seem to overreach for laughs at times but it served its purpose. To make people laugh like idiots. It would still be funny if they just had all four of them talk in gibberish. Even in parts where the situations are just too much and in scenes where it feels too animated, such as in that sequence where they imagine being interrogated by Res’s brusko family which bordered on ka-OAyan, but was salvaged by Sugar’s (John Lapuz) osctracism, it was still impossible not to crack up.

Apat Dapat is just the sort of thing you’d expect from director Wenn Deramas: exaggerated scenarios, outrageous plot, loud and ridiculous characters that have ridiculous jobs, gay sidekicks and most noticeably, pretty male leads. And it all plays for the best because we kind of get the feeling that he knows just what we want from his movie. And if anyone could believe that in real life, it is possible that Eugene Domingo can get married to the likes of Christian Vasquez, Candy Pangilinan to her leading man (which is not to say that Candy is not pretty, just wacky), Pokwang to her leading man and that John Lapus can make out with Kian Kazemi (this one though, not so much), then we can consider this movie as one hell of an inspiration. And it can make us laugh like idiots. Fucking watch it.

Why Sunflowers

A friend and I wanted to do something different on a Friday. Something that would involve not having to talk about depression and its major causes. We realize how dumb it’s getting that we always talk about the same things and even dumber that we repeat the exact same things because sometimes, there’s really not much else to talk about. So different meant something we won’t be doing again anytime soon. Which brought us to see La Noche de los Girasoles (The Night of the Sunflowers), one of the few Spanish films being shown in Makati for the Spanish month/Spain invasion thing that happens every once in a while.

The movie watching experience is sometimes more interesting than the actual movie. When I saw Ang Lalake sa Parola, a movie that was crapped at (see below), the Rob Place cinema resembled a bath house, a sort of gay joint that momentarily stripped the movie house off it’s right to be called a movie house. So you can just imagine the type of crowd that went to see this film that comically disturbed us. Foreign film fest goers are intelligent, one can safely assume. And my friend and I, Not Smart. We fancy that we are but we’re not. And like the proper non-intelligent viewers that we are, we were highly reactive during the film. At least in parts where it was OK to react.

La Noche is about some cave in an unfamous village that some lame brained villager thought was worth taking a peek at, bringing the media’s attention to what would turn out to be nothing but some really boring and probably stinking cave. Esteban (Carmelo Gomez), a man who was compelled to go to the cave because he is in the relevant profession (I forgot what he’s supposed to be), went marching to the town together with his wife (I think) and photographer friend to see what the fuss was about. As the cave was really just a dud, the most logical thing to do was go home and report to the people that it was nothing. But while they were deep in the cave, things were happening at the town. Things that would make these people’s trip more than just a hugely wasted mountain exploration. I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone because it’s good but if you really want to know, Esteban and his posse are going to get really screwed. There’s going to be an attempted rape, murder, stupidity, adultery and conspiracy. The stuff that fun and good films are made of.

The Espanyols are excellent filmmakers. And I don’t just mean Pedro Almodovar (if he is Spanish). Jorge Sanchez Cabezudo who made this super eerie thriller made children out of adults and made girls out of boys. I mean, people were squealing because there are quite a number of fuck-ups in the film. Spanish filmmakers like to use episodes which could sometimes feel like watching a really long telenovela but they are able to pull it off because they are competent and it’s nice when a competent director makes a thriller.

I was sitting next to this guy who I felt was truly appreciative of the film’s greatness because he clapped when it ended. As I’ve mentioned, the film has that effect where after leaving the cinema, you feel like a character in the movie left with You and you get the feeling that the same exact thing can and will happen if you’re not careful. It was just fucken scary. That said, friend and I were dropping expletives all the time because the rapist was really creepy and we have nerves so we were saying Shet Puta and Tangena while watching. And Intelligent Film Fan on my left kept saying My Goodness and Gosh not because he was scared himself but because he was, I can tell, slightly annoyed by us. He probably gets why it’s sunflowers (in the title) and we don’t but can’t a group of lower-IQd individuals be accorded the equal right to enjoy Intelligent Films and be allowed to say shit as proper? So anyway, we got the hell out and on the way home, we were deep in thought, seriously thinking if we have been followed. It was a terrific movie and Intelligent Film Fan on my left was an equally terrific seatmate.

Lighthouse Hottie

People who watch indie films tend to get taken seriously than those who watch mainstream stuff. Those who shun digital indie productions probably have no idea that some indie movies can also be terrifically crappy. When I went to see Ang Lalake sa Parola, I thought I’d be seeing some really heavily cerebral shit and I’d be fine if I didn’t get it. But I got it. It’s a Randy Blue made-for-TV movie shot in the Philippines, extended cut. It’s soft porn with an excellent last shot.

Justin de Leon, that Viva not-so-hot man plays the rich-guy-from-Manila homosexual beefcake Jerome who is looking for a land to buy in the pretty town of wherever, Batangas. Like some any random gay fantasy, he spots a sensitive and gorgeous probinsyano, Matteo (Harry Laurel) who of course has a great bod and an even greater ass. Matteo’s supposed to be straight but he fools around with Jerome, drinks with him in the wee hours of the night, leaves his zipper open after peeing and lets fag boy zip it close for him. So, yes, wise sirs who made this film, we get that he’s gay, but did you really have to bludgeon us with a backstory of how he didn’t have a father figure and how he’s conflicted just so we’d understand how he got to be gay? Why couldn’t he have been just a gay person who gets it on with a dude? Is that such a difficult story to tell? It’s the 00s, sexuality as a movie subject is hardly revolutionary. Sexuality is almost a non-issue.

So aside from obvious lapses in production, rickety camera work and just general awfulness, the film suffers from cringe-inducing acting and script. If you’re gay and you watch this, you’re probably poised to get turned on because Justin de Leon and Harry Laurel have Really Nice Bodies but their scenes are awkward and elicit some sort of what-the-hell-are-they-doing? feeling. A friend noted that in real life, when you’re about to have sex you don’t take someone’s shirt off slowly. You rip it off. You don’t get to act all romantic if you’re very horny, which in most 2 guys’ case is almost always what happens. But real life schmeal life. Me and and my ‘conflicted’ guy friends who Didn’t Have Father Figures In Their Lives saw this movie with the scorching desire to see some action. What we got instead was fodder for a late night discussion about gayness which we could have come up with even without having seen this.

The last thing I want to be saying about some struggling filmmaker’s attempt to create ‘art’ is that his work is bad and that a lot of things are wrong in it. But sometimes, I can’t help it. Much in the same way that the film’s scriptwriter could not help but create a tepid story about a man’s tussle about his sexuality. There’s a general feeling that Ang Lalake sa Parola could have been better. The Diwata, as a metaphor for the homosexual tease was a nice touch but the rampant reference to it kind of got too much. The use of the old man’s own fairy tale to tell Matteo’s own didn’t seem to be very necessary. It would not have mattered if Matteo’s story was told in plain, old-fashioned narrative without bothering to do the flashback eklat which seems to be everybody’s favorite style. Seriously, it could have been much enjoyable if they just had sex three-fourths of the movie’s run.

But hey, I still enjoyed it. Justin de Leon’s transition from semi-discreet to flaming queen was one of the most amusing things in the film. Habang tumatagal, pa-effem siya nang pa-effem, which leaves no wonder why Matteo, pretentious flit that he is, left him. I don’t know if Jerome’s degree of gayness was supposed to be a mystery because upon arrival in town, he flees to the lighthouse, takes a peek at the windows and jacks off to the rhythm of Matteo and Jennifer Lee’s sex sounds. Whose moans was he getting off to? But neither Justin nor the character gave much room for preponderance. He’s a queen, alright. And that gay (what else) kakanin tindero, he probably doesn’t know it but he breathed life into the film, standing regally in front of the ubiquitous lighthouse, just by saying the line, ‘Ako ang diwata’. That scene killed me. They never ever make movies about the right character.

Mot-Mot Diaries

One excellent way to waste time is to read a book where the movie adaptation is readily available. I did just that by reading The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevarra lent by a friend who has both book and DVD. I am not particularly interested with the Latin American revolutionaries that happened in the ‘40s and/or ‘50s because they’re too grim and prophetic. And also, I’ve seen Dirty Dancing 2 and have read and seen Before Night Falls and I thought I’ve had enough of Cuban/Lat Am history lesson, served in a Hollywood platter though they may be. But something about Che Guevarra, whose face was immortalized on several shirts (worn mostly by people who probably have no clue as to who the hell that man is on their supposed fashionable shirts) roused the intrigero in me. I wanted to know who the F Che is and why his face got too famous to have been emblazoned in those cute-as-hell tees and why not Hitler or Schindler instead.

Che Guevarra, as it turns out, is an incendiary, noble little creep who, together with his almost equally compulsive buddy Alberto Granada traveled the expanse of South America to reach Chile or wherever the hell city they have reached. While not exactly a creep, Che was a little bit of a crackhead to leave med school so he could travel with his bozo friend on a torn-down, sorry-looking motorcycle. The two knew how to have a rollicking good time and even managed to secure for themselves lodging, food, wine and at times, women. And it’s impressive how their really good impersonation of medical experts got them basic necessities and whims. 

Along the way, they encounter major hassles and major asthma attacks but there hasn’t been any time when they felt the need to go back. They’re men after all. Going back would have spelled p-u-s-s-y and they are both not. As is true for most journeys, especially those that are planned without much thought put into, the destination is not an exact place but an experience that will make them two different, noble adults, transformed through rough roads, bad alcohol, raging hormones, bouts of asthma and other unpleasantness. Nice book.

Revealing and romantic as the book was, it just didn’t have that one thing that the Walter Salles movie had: Gael. Reading the book wasn’t a complete waste of time because the film has subtitles and it’s not very cool to have to read a movie. I wanted to see the actors, the landscapes, and hear the sexy accents. I certainly didn’t plan to get dizzy. So if you’re really just planning to slobber over Gael Garica Bernal, it might be a bit wise to read the book first and then see the movie (You might also want to see Bad Education). The movie’s about 2 hours long and the time it took me to read the book is 3 weeks so that’s 3 weeks and 2 hours of time wasted. But since I am good at wasting precious time, I didn’t mind. The Motorcycle Diaries is a trouble-ridden series of diaries but it’s safe to read and the characters in it are people that actually matters. This is how diaries should be.