Philippine cinema has been represented in Udine since the Far East Film Festival began, and in those two decades the same basic themes have emerged repeatedly. Let’s look at these themes and how they played out in the year 2017.
1 — Indies. These are some of the movies that made it to the year-end critics’ lists. The documentaries Motherland by Ramona Diaz, about the maternity ward in a public hospital, and In the Claws of a Century Wanting (Sa Palad Ng Dantaong Kulang) by Jewel Maranan, about the urban badlands of Tondo, Manila. Balangiga: Howling Wilderness by Khavn de la Cruz, a period drama set in the Philippine-American War, and The Chanters by James Robin Mayo, about a disappearing tribal tradition. Please Care (Paki), a sprawling family drama by Giancarlo Abrahan. Respect (Respeto) by Treb Monteras II, an unflinching depiction of current social and political violence in the Philippines.
They are all independent films attesting to the energy, courage, ambition, and breadth of 21st century Filipino cinema. Except for a few screenings at local film festivals before they hit the international festival circuit, they will not be seen by the Filipino audience they were made for.
2 — Distribution. The gatekeepers who control access to commercial exhibition venues have long denied access to ‘arthouse’ projects, presumably in the belief that the public is not interested in them. That belief has been challenged over and over again in recent years, but it has not changed the stance of the powers that be. In the rare event that an indie without a romantic subject makes it to the mall cineplex, it would be lucky to last the day without being replaced by a more mainstream production.
The good news is that social media – the tech-powered version of ‘word of mouth’ – is closing the divide between critical opinion and the public’s taste. Social media campaigns have rallied the viewers and kept worthy movies from being displaced from theatres. For instance, The Portrait (Ang Larawan), a musical film by Loy Arceñas, would have been pulled from cinemas due to weak box-office were it not for the efforts of viewers who urged their friends to see it. The Portrait stayed on screens, and went on to win the top prizes at the Metro Manila Film Festival in December. Nevertheless, getting indie films on screens is only the beginning of the struggle. Keeping them there is a battle in a system that has always favoured the big studios.
3 — Mainstream Commercial Cinema. Last year the most profitable Filipino movies were religiously devoted to commercial formulas. Cathy Garcia-Molina’s My Ex and Whys, Theodore Boborol’s Finally Found Someone, and Mae Cruz-Alviar’s Can’t Help Falling in Love capitalised on the charms of its attractive lead couples. In tales as old as time, boy and girl fall in love, break up, get back together, break up, and get back together in time for the closing credits. These films were produced by the long-running ruler of the Philippine box office, Star Cinema.
4 — Star Cinema. To its credit, Star Cinema has made attempts at evolution, tweaking its time-tested formula with newer conventions (which, if they work, become the new formula). Movies like Love You to the Stars and Back by Antoinette Jadaone and Seven Sundays by Cathy Garcia-Molina tried to freshen up the familiar by introducing quirky characters and awkwardly humorous situations. They were rewarded at the box office.
5 — Rom-coms. The romantic comedy is still the dominant genre in Philippine cinema.
6 — Bittersweet love stories. However, the ‘com’ in rom-com seems to be giving way to something darker and more cynical. Dan Villegas’s All of You, Prime Cruz’s Can We Still Be Friends and Jason Paul Laxamana’s 100 Tula Para Kay Stella contain protagonists who behave like recognisable people, and acknowledge that romantic love, for all its thrills, still requires work.
7 — Love teams. Enrique Gil as a womanizer pursues his ex-girlfriend played by Liza Soberano, and the affair comes to a head in Nami Island, Korea in My Ex and Whys. Box-office take: PHP410 million, placing it among the 10 highest-grossing films in Philippine history. Finally Found Someone featured the return of one of local cinema’s most successful love teams, Sarah Geronimo and John Lloyd Cruz. As per habit, the audience trooped to the theatres, to the tune of PHP316 million. The proven romantic pairing of Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla returned in Can’t Help Falling in Love, earning PHP300 million.
8 — Comedies. Vice Ganda is still the reigning box-office champion. Gandarrapido: The Revenger Squad grossed PHP540 million, enough to place it among the three top-grossing local movies in history (the first and fourth are also Vice Ganda vehicles).
9 — Surprises. The biggest shocker of 2017 was I See You (Kita Kita) by Sigrid Andrea Bernardo. This romantic comedy about two overseas Filipino workers who fall in love in Sapporo, Japan, brushed aside big-budget studio movies and Hollywood hits to dominate the box-office for weeks. A PHP10 million co-production of the independent producer Spring Films and the established studio Viva Films, I See You made PHP300 million, sending producers scurrying to explain its success and replicate it. Was it the unlikely pairing of a good-looking woman (Alessandra de Rossi) and an ordinary-looking man (Empoy Marquez)? Marquez was quickly cast in an action-comedy called The Barker, opposite the requisite good-looking woman (Shy Carlos). The Barker quickly disproved that theory.
10 — Hollywood. Nothing new here. Beauty and the Beast, Wonder Woman, Thor: Ragnarok, The Fate of the Furious, and Spider-Man: Homecoming wiped the floor with the competition by having no competition. Their playdates were reserved for them – in the major venues, there was only token resistance. Moviegoers who went to the cinema in those weeks had little choice but to watch them. They were always going to be mega-blockbusters, but there’s nothing like a little overkill to ensure even bigger profits.
11 — The new Metro Manila Film Festival. In 2015, the controversy-plagued Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) was subjected to a Senate inquiry, leading to dramatic changes in its selection procedures. The new festival committee decreed that henceforth, they would make their decisions on the basis of finished movies rather than hastily-assembled script treatments and cast lists. As a result, movies that would’ve had a snowball’s chance in hell of participating in the MMFF were suddenly in theatres during the holiday season, the most lucrative time of the year for movies. For the first time in ages, moviegoers had choices outside of the usual sequels to endless melodramas and fantasy flicks. The reception was overwhelmingly positive. The festival box-office, as could be expected from such a radical change, did not measure up to that of previous years.
12 — The new old Metro Manila Film Festival. So it was back to the old, familiar MMFF. As a consolation prize, the Film Development Council of the Philippines set up a midyear Pista Ng Pelikulang Pilipino (Feast of Filipino Film) – a sort of MMFF for indie movies. By its very existence, this festival confirmed that the small players who dare to offer the audience something different are not about to get a seat at the table soon.
13 — Movies and politics: Pro-War on Drugs. The all-out war on drugs waged by the government of President Rodrigo Duterte had its cinematic proponents in Carlo J. Caparas’s Venom of Drugs (Kamandag Ng Droga) and Dinkydoo Clarion’s Crush the Druglords (Durugin Ang Droga).
14 — Movies and politics: Anti-War on Drugs. Filipino filmmakers responded swiftly to the extrajudicial killings perpetrated in the Duterte administration: head-on in films like Monteras’s Respect and Mikhail Red’s Neomanila, and obliquely in genre films like Joseph Laban’s Baconaua and Kip Oebanda’s Nay.
15 — Brillante Mendoza. If the Duterte government can be said to have an official filmmaker it is Mendoza, who won the Best Director prize at Cannes a decade ago for Butchered (Kinatay). Apart from declaring his support for the war on drugs, Mendoza directed Duterte’s State of the Nation Address in 2016, and again in 2017.
16 — Lav Diaz. Winner of the Silver Bear in Berlin for Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis) and the Golden Lion in Venice for The Woman Who Left (Ang Babaeng Humayo) in 2016, Diaz recently premiered his latest, a four-hour black-and-white musical called Season of the Devil (Panahon Ng Halimaw) at the Berlin Film Festival.
17 — Historical epics. In 2015 Jerrold Tarrog’s historical biopic of the revolutionary General Luna was a critical and commercial hit that spurred fresh interest in Philippine history. The sequel Goyo: The Young General (Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral), based on the life of General Gregorio del Pilar, is slated for release this year and is widely expected to repeat the success of its predecessor. Meanwhile it bears the heavy weight of expectations.
18 — LGBT movies. Apart from Vice Ganda’s mega-hit Gandarrapido, there were smaller projects that touched on LGBT issues. Worthy of note are Chedeng and Apple (Si Chedeng at Si Apple) by Fatrick Tabada and Rae Red, a buddy comedy in which an older lady searches for her lost lesbian love, and Deadma Walking by Julius Alfonso, in which a gay man fakes his own death in order to hear what people say about him at his own wake.
19 — Musicals. Is this the start of a golden age of Filipino film musicals? Apart from the aforementioned Season of the Devil, there is Dan Villegas’s adaptation of Vincent De Jesus’s musical play Changing Partners, and Loy Arceñas’s The Portrait. The latter is the adaptation of a musical play based on National Artist Nick Joaquin’s play, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino.
20 — Detective thriller. The arthouse filmmaker Raya Martin (Independencia, La ultima pelicula) made his first commercial film, Smaller and Smaller Circles, an adaptation of the serial killer novel by F.H. Batacan. Anyone who expects a by-the-numbers crime thriller should probably look elsewhere.
Jessica Zafra