European Premiere | In Competition
The Philippines, 2023, 114’, Filipino
Directed by: Jun Robles Lana
Screenplay: Jun Robles Lana
Cinematography (color): Kara Moreno
Editing: Benjamin Tolentino
Production Design: JayLo Conanan
Music: Teresa Barozzo
Sound: Armand De Guzman
Creative Consultant: Elmer Gatchalian
Producers: Jun Robles Lana, Ferdy Lapuz
Executive Producer: Perci M. Intalan
Cast: Eugene Domingo, Pokwang, Romnick Sarmienta, Agot Isidro, Adrian Lindayag, Peewee O’ Hara, Angie Castrence
Date of First Release in Territory: December 25th, 2023
Opening with a pastel-colored nod to Ishmael Bernal’s 1984 masterpiece Working Girls, Jun Robles Lana’s Becky and Badette establishes itself as fundamentally a comedy about, well, working girls. Tired of their low-wage job cleaning a gleaming office building, naturally blonde besties Becky (Domingo) and Badette (Pokwang) take their big dreams to an even bigger stage: show business. After getting humiliated at a high school reunion, Becky, who’s had enough of feeling small and powerless, harnesses her love of Vilma Santos films and decides to go on a drunken monologue onstage and ends up with Badette and her confessing that they have been a couple all along.
Their declaration of (fake) love goes viral. The two have been branded as the two new queer icons, so much so that the morning after, still hungover, Becky gets an offer from a queer music producer for an album (actual queer musician Ice Seguerra) and Badette gets an offer from a big-time director (actual director Sigrid Andrea Bernardo) to star as an “authentic” lesbian in a fantasy television series. Not only that, their mothers were so moved by their video that they decided to come out and no longer hide their love in secret. Now, Becky and Badette have two choices: start the careers they’ve dreamed of, yet built on a lie, or come out to the public and say that the video clip was all a drunken mistake. Of course, they choose the former.
On the surface, the film touches on the Filipino phenomenon of on-screen “love teams.” Love teams continue to be the bread and butter of the local entertainment industry, powering films, TV shows, and even advertisements. Becky and Badette gives this heterosexually dominated space a queer twist. In the film’s world Badette, the two are billed as “lesbian majesties,” get a portmanteau of their own (BB), and have numerous fan clubs following their life as a couple on and off-screen. But once their childhood crush Pepe Feniz (a not-too-subtle combination of “penis” and “pepe” a Filipino slang for the female genitalia) comes out to break this queer facade, it becomes open season.
Becky and Badette follows Lana’s long line of queer-focused films (such as The Two Mrs. Reyeses, Die Beautiful, Big Night!, and The Panti Sisters) but what makes it so unique is having two comedy icons portray a lesbian power couple. It is undeniable that Domingo and Pokwang are the beating heart of the film, playing off their lines with so much delight, while careful not to play Becky and Badette as caricatures. The scenario itself is absurd after all: the Filipino public accepting a lesbian on-screen couple? Hilarious! Lana knows this and subtly tugs at the stereotypes and microaggressions that lesbians face, one scene of which involves Badette herself.
The fact that two lesbian characters headline Becky and Badette is already so refreshing in a long line of Filipino queer films that are mostly focused on male homosexual lives. But more importantly, Lana asks us to confront queerbaiting and cancel culture from the point of view of two “queer” working girls. As the film’s layers peel from one absurd scenario to another, Lana envisions a reckoning that only comes from our ability (or disability) to face our own prejudices.
OSPITI
Jun Robles LANA, director
Perci INTALAN, producer
Eugene DOMINGO, actress
Jun Robles LANA
Jun Robles Lana first debuted as a writer in 1998 in In the Navel of the Sea for his mentor, the veteran Marilou Diaz-Abaya. It was in Bwakaw (FEFF 21) that Lana showcased his quiet yet remarkable flair as a director and featured the late actor Eddie Garcia in one of his greatest performances. Even during the years when Philippine cinema floundered, Lana turned in film after film that contained his signature as a filmmaker, whether it’s in the stark realism of Big Night! (2021) or the suspenseful chamber piece of About Us but not About Us (2022).
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
2006 – Gigil
2011 – My Neighbor’s Wife
2012 – Barber’s Tales
2015 – Shadow Behind the Moon
2016 – Die Beautiful
2019 – Kalel 15
2023 – Ten Little Mistresses
2023 – Your Mother’s Son
2023 – Becky and Badette