In 2018, for the first time in the history of Philippine cinema, a film crossed the PHP600 million mark (roughly US$11 million) at the local box office. The Hows of Us, headlined by the “love team” of Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla – an acting duo who usually play a romantic couple in movies and TV shows, and are popularly known as “KathNiel” – enjoyed a four-month run and ended the year with PHP915 million (around US$17 million) worldwide. That made it the highest-grossing Filipino film of all time. The previous title-holder, the Vice Ganda starrer The Super Parental Guardians, is now in second place, and Ganda’s 2018 outing Fantastica (PHP596 million/US$11 million) now ranks third. To highlight what Filipino movies are up against, the highest grossing film of 2018, Avengers: Infinity War, took PHP1,217 billion (around US$23 million).
At a time when Filipino films are expanding their scope and retooling their narratives, The Hows of Us stands out because it adheres to a formula. That may be why it was such a hit. The story is slim: two exes bicker about a house that’s been left to them. The girl wants to sell it, but the guy doesn’t want to, hoping to win her back by reliving their memories in it. The film attempts to make the situation more mature than usual – there is an implied live-in relationship, a less vulnerable female lead taking charge of her own life, and some strong emotions – and that pleased audiences who wanted to see something new. The film had the requisite big moments, big speeches, and big cathartic scenes in a foreign land, something which is becoming a trend in Filipino movies again. It’s a good, harmless romance for the family.
By comparison, the last five years have seen filmmakers shaking up the rom-com game by generating raw and honest films like Before Sunset rather than the painfully pure happy-ever-afters that audiences were fed by studios like Star Cinema (the biggest peddler of rom-coms in the Philippines), Regal Films, and Viva Films. Filmmakers who grew up with rom-com classics such as Got 2 Believe (2002) and Loving Someone (May Minamahal, 1993) have started to criticise the way these stories have shaped the attitudes of a generation of audiences when it comes to love and relationships.
Enthusiastic reviews of recent rom-coms claim that director Antoinette Jadaone is responsible for refreshing tired genre tropes. Jadaone’s That Thing Called Tadhana (aka That Thing Called Fate, 2014) is a 110-minute road movie that has more talk and less conventional romancing. This indie festival darling became a crossover hit, proving that there is an audience for new ways of telling a love story. Jadaone went on to direct big studio rom-coms, but in 2018, she hit another high point with Never Not Love You, a bold departure from the usual Valentine’s Day fare. The film was praised for tackling domestic problems and real-world disappointments. It helped that it starred two of the biggest Filipino matinee idols, James Reid and Nadine Lustre (or JaDine), who are known for films and TV shows in which they end up happily together. But, as in Never Not Love You, what happens when their love story is confronted with economic realities and they are forced to compromise? The film only made around PHP92 million (around US$1.7 million) but it turned up on many year-end lists, and it ranked fifth in an aggregate poll of the best Filipino films of the year by academics, critics, and filmmakers.
Never Not Love You is just one of the notable acclaimed romantic films of 2018 that defied traditional conventions. Irene Villamor re-engineered the notions of fateful love in two films: Meet Me in St. Gallen, where two people coincidentally meet at three different points of their lives; and Sid and Aya: Not a Love Story, where a stockbroker hires a barista to keep him company during sleepless nights. The latter zooms in on class disparity, dealing with its ramifications with a practical tone rather than coated them with a thick, sugary veneer as in the usual upstairs-downstairs rom-coms. Dan Villegas’ Exes Baggage dealt with two former lovers coming to terms with their feelings for each other.
In the face of this shakeup of the romance genre, the success of The Hows of Us may be the audience’s response to realism. Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo hark back to the days of traditional leading men and women who could appeal to a huge demographic. Think Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts when their careers were buoyed by films like My Best Friend’s Wedding and You’ve Got Mail. Timing matters as well, and it was helped by the fact there was no franchise movie competing against it during its release (if a film is sure to make money, it will be booked in several cinemas, and sometimes even a whole cineplex, as in the case of big superhero movies). Then there was the effect of word of mouth. The film’s producer Star Cinema released the film’s earnings every few days, and when it tipped over, say, PHP400 million, the situation became intriguing enough for curious onlookers to give it a view. Its worldwide success is down to the large population of Filipino overseas workers and their families who are always hungry to connect with their roots and their country’s pop culture.
Some might take the triumph of The Hows of Us as an auspicious sign, especially now that Philippine cinema is celebrating 100 years. But The Hows of Us and Fantastica only continue a brand of formula filmmaking that has been a staple for one of the biggest production houses in the country, Star Cinema. Such films are wholesome, family fun, and feature big celebrities. They are designed to be enjoyed by as many people as possible in all demographics. For the studios, it makes sense to produce popular genre films like rom-coms, comedy, and horror movies. It’s what works.
After The Hows of Us and Fantastica, the next notable box-office successes, taking around the PHP200-300 million mark, include the comedy Jack Em Popoy: The Puliscredibles which is an Avengers-style crossover of big Pinoy actors: box office kings Vic Sotto and Coco Martin (who also stars in the highest rating primetime television show in the Philippines), and one half of the massive love team phenom AlDub, Maine Mendoza; and Exes Baggage. Other films in the top 10 box-office chart took around PHP100 million.
In a Facebook post that sparked debate earlier this year, director Erik Matti (On the Job, Seclusion, BuyBust) talked about the dwindling attendance of Filipino films, which is happening even though there seems to be a film premiering every week. (There are more film festivals than a critic with minimal pay can handle, in fact.)
“The film industry was at its busiest during the past three years, but no one gets to see the movies we make, except for the sporadic megahits. Hundreds of movies are being made now, but no one is really doing good business, and that includes the big studios. What happened to our local audience?” he said.
“The state of our film industry, the business of it, is in a dire situation. Someone should do something about it. Government should intervene. This is not a slow death anymore. We are on life support and we need resuscitation,” Matti added.
Theatre owners aren’t helping. Underperforming movies are pulled out of cinemas after two to three days, and when the country’s biggest mall chains shut you out of distribution, there’s little chance for you to reach a wider audience and earn more. With streaming sites and free online content, why would the average moviegoer spend their PHP250 (around US$4.8, almost half a day’s wage for an average Filipino worker) for a film, when they could spend that money on food or other necessities?
“No one is going to the movies in the era [of president Rodrigo Duterte], and that’s not a coincidence,” says director Jade Castro (Endo: Love on a Budget; Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings) in a Twitter thread responding to Matti’s post. “People are getting poorer while going to movies got more expensive. [Tickets, transportation], food: a luxury in a country with few jobs, low wages, and [a harsh tax] law.”
“We didn’t stop watching movies. What stopped was moviegoing as a habit. Duterte killed nightlife in Davao City [when he was a mayor there]. Leisure for the common folk is not his priority. So we still (sometimes) watch Hollywood blockbusters. Maybe we see them as events we set aside money for, not a habit. How to explain the gargantuan sales of The Hows of Us? Maybe that’s an event, too. Or worse, maybe it was a fluke. Some say people watch more movies during darker times. This was true when moviegoing was cheap and there was no internet to shock or titillate us (such as porn). We live in dark times and we are hungry to be entertained, but we can do that with our phone,” said Castro.
Castro adds: “You want to bring back the power of people to watch movies in 2019? Vote for leaders who actually care about quality of life, not those who think of us as criminal disposables that need less rights, while putting all their efforts into securing their own power and businesses of allies.”
For the film enthusiast, there seems to be no better time to watch Filipino movies than now, especially at film festivals where a diverse crop of talent – both emerging and established – usually finds a home. Yet these “important” films are seen by only a handful of viewers, and they disappear from theatres after two to three days outside of their festival runs, though they enjoy a second life in micro-cinemas. For the producer, it is both exciting and frustrating: a new generation of talent means there are a lot of minds rethinking the urgency of cinema, yet the proverbial audience, beyond festival goers, is hardly felt or seen. For the filmmaker, there’s a challenge posed by torrent of content available to audiences.
Still, there is a sense of life, and a feeling that things are going in the right direction. Looking at the film bloggers’ and critics’ giddy year-end lists, the most acclaimed films are more adventurous, and delve deeper into the wooly places of the Filipino narrative. Chito S. Roño’s Signal Rock, the Philippine entry to the Academy Awards, is a sprawling story of an island community trying to escape poverty in the most Filipino way, bayanihan; Dwein Baltazar’s Ode to Nothing (Oda sa Wala) is an absurdist black comedy about one woman’s crushing loneliness; Samantha Lee’s Billie & Emma used the language of a rom-com to tell a coming of age, lesbian love story in a small town, where gender norms are stricter and, to some extent, crueller; and Carlo Catu’s Waiting for Sunset (Kung Paano Hinihintay ang Dapithapon) is a plaintive ode to companionship during the twilight years. Victor Delotavo Tagaro and Uriu Toshihiko’s ethnographic documentary Yield focuses on a group of children dealing with poverty and the cyclical oppression that drags them in its undertow.
But the most notable aspect is how filmmakers address the bloody regime of President Rodrigo Duterte as he continues his authoritarian rule riddled with extrajudicial killings, human rights violations and attempts to silence critics. Matti’s BuyBust is a damning indictment of the war on drugs where, as the body count piles up in the film’s shantytown setting, the viewer is left to discern the parallels with the actual drug war. Golden Lion winner Lav Diaz dealt with the spectre of tyranny in his – surprise! – musical The Season of the Devil (Ang Panahon ng Halimaw), a not-so-veiled parable about the evils wielded by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos (whose family is regaining power and position in the national government). Kip Oebanda’s Liway is biography of his activist mother and his years spent growing up in jail where his mother was incarcerated during the latter days of the Martial Law era.
Jerrold Tarog’s big-budget historical epic Goyo: The Boy General (Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral), a follow-up to his successful Heneral Luna, told the tragic story of the Filipino soldiers who died in the Battle of Tirad pass during the Filipino-American War, and, as an antithesis to the repressive leanings of Heneral Luna, questioned blind allegiance to authoritarian figures. Meanwhile, acclaimed director Mike De Leon (Batch ‘81, Sister Stella L) roused himself from a long hiatus to direct the controversial Citizen Jake, a crime drama that overtly drew parallels between the administrations of Marcos and Duterte.
These films signal both a call to action and, maybe, a call to arms, asking viewers not to forget about historical horrors and to be vigilant. It just might be the reason why some filmmakers keep going, telling urgent tales that reflect the atrocities of this era. After all, what better way to make viewers confront the demons surrounding them by putting them on a 50-foot screen in surround sound?
Don Jaucian