While the rest of the first world – those who have hoarded vaccines for their citizens – are starting to live with the virus, the Philippines is still trying to control the spread of the pandemic. A large part of 2021 saw tighter restrictions imposed: no mass gatherings, public spaces closed, and limits on commercial operations. Theatres closed and “cinema” stayed inside our homes, on Netflix and other streaming platforms. Despite this, film shoots got underway, with budgets higher than usual because of Covid-19 protocols. “Bubbles” and lock-ins were imposed to minimize the risk of exposure. But the slow trickling of pandemic films onto streaming sites and into cinemas – which opened during the latter part of the year when restrictions eased – meant that the pandemic hasn’t stopped filmmakers from turning their experiences into art.
Several films released in 2021 started production before the pandemic, including Erik Matti’s action caper On the Job: The Missing 8 and Lawrence A. Fajardo’s remake of the Korean action film A Hard Day. But there are several films that bear signs of trying to work around the limitations of shooting a film during a global pandemic. First is the obvious use of video conferencing or even an imagined virtual space (as in Erik Matti’s Gen-Z sex comedy A Girl and a Guy). There’s the use of resort hotels as setting (as in Dwein Baltazar’s boys’ love series movie incarnation Hello, Stranger: The Movie, Irene Villamor’s romantic drama You and Me and the End) or even a remote town setting for isolation, which works to drum up the air of dread and despair (as in Miko Livelo’s hilarious zombie comedy, On a Restless Night or Lawrence A. Fajardo’s riveting reworking of a stranger-in-a-strange-town trope in Reroute).
There are also films that confine characters inside a house or a property, to maintain a production “bubble.” (As in Ivan Andrew Payawal’s tender Gameboys: The Movie – another film version of a boy’s love series, or in Erik Matti’s terrifying horror anthology Rabid). There’s even Mikhail Red’s action film Arisaka, shot in 2020, which makes use of a wide, lonely expanse to compound the protagonist’s struggle to evade her hunters. Films also talk about isolation and loneliness, something that’s very pronounced in You and Me and the End, where the leads are social outcasts trying to get to the farthest point of the Philippines. These serve as reminders that we remain as disconnected as ever.
Cinemas reopened in time for Christmas. The effects of vaccination drives (though still below the government’s target) started to manifest in the decrease of daily cases in the last two months of 2021. This also meant that the commercial fest Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) returned to mall theatres after taking place online in 2020. Moviegoers anticipated a hybrid edition, as the majority of the population remains unvaccinated – so contracting the virus is still a possibility – but the committee made it clear that the festival would take place in-person. Under the Alert Level classification in place, only 300 cinemas were in operation, each with 50 percent capacity, which partly explains the lackluster numbers of the 2021 festival.
Another reason for the lacklustre ticket sales was that there were few crowd-pleasers on offer. There were no heartwarming dramas like Miracle in Cell No. 7 (the top grosser of 2019); no effects-heavy action flicks like Ang Panday (which achieved the second highest earnings of 2017); and no laugh-out-loud comedies like Vice Ganda’s usual MMFF mainstays. In fact, the 2021 edition didn’t involve the star attractions to draw an audience. Although Daniel Padilla – one half of the popular KathNiel love team, whose film The Hows of Us (2018) is the highest-grossing Filipino film – turned up in Carlo Francisco Manatad’s Wether the Weather Is Fine, the film is not light, and it does not feature his usual partner Kathryn Bernardo. It’s an absurd and unusual tale of a family’s struggle in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban, where the damage was most severe. It scooped seven trophies at the awards night, including Second Best Picture, after the comedy ensemble film Big Night! which chronicled a gay man’s struggle to erase his name from the town’s narco list.
On December 25th, the festival’s first day, reports of empty theatres and queue-less ticket booths popped up on social media. Theatre operators also reported dismal earnings. No official box office grosses were released, even after the festival finished. In comparison, the 2019 edition grossed a total of ₱955 million (around US$18 million). The festival committee did not release earnings for the 2020 online edition (which featured the FEFF alum Fan Girl) but said that the first day of the 2021 edition “covered 1/3 of the total MMFF Online gross (in its entire run) last year.”
The lineup of the festival also prompted some discussion on social media, as the festival’s two-week exclusive run in theatres meant that Spider-Man: No Way Home would be delayed until January 2022. Some fans who were looking forward to the Marvel film – after almost two years of being deprived of any big Marvel theatrical releases – wished that the festival was not happening at all, and others dismissed the MMFF films as formulaic and unwatchable. It only goes to show that a segment of the audience would risk their lives for a Marvel movie, but not for a Filipino film. A user on Reddit wrote, “If I were to spend that much money for a ticket, I’d go with Spider-Man which I already know [is worth it]. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not saying every movie [at the] MMFF is bad, but maybe they need to level up [in terms of] strategy, effort and quality.”
The films of Vice Ganda – which earn millions of pesos every year at the festival – were a particular subject of ire, and were deemed tired and unsophisticated. Indeed, the idea that baduy (uncool/unfashionable) films dominate the MMFF has long been a subject of debate, as the MMFF has established itself as a capitalistic machine, bent on raking in Christmas money from viewers who expect to be entertained (though there is nothing wrong with wanting to watch films that entertain).
That said, it’s easy to dismiss Vice Ganda films if you haven’t seen them. The films – churned out in quick succession from 2012 to 2019 and earning an estimated one million US$ in total – hilariously skewer the social system. The Mall the Merrier (2019) is about real estate grabbing by big malls, and Fantastica (2019), is also about real-estate takeovers. The films are good wholesome fun for a family wanting a good laugh during the holidays, but do sometimes feel like a series of jokes and skits built around a slim story.
It’s actually the MMFF’s system of selection and cinema allocation (which gives the bigger movies more theatres) that is in need of retooling. After all, we’ve seen blockbusters of Vic Sotto (Enteng Kabisote) and Vice Ganda occasionally coexist with gems such as the musical The Portrait (2017), the crime thriller Honor Thy Father (2015), the romcom English Only, Please (2014), and the (rare) animated film RPG Metanoia (2010). But such gems have admittedly been few.
For further insight into the selection of the films, you can read film critic Philbert Dy’s 2016 essay on his experience as a committee member. An example: “In practice, it’s about an hour’s total of talking about nothing. It’s an exercise in empty rhetoric. The committee hardly seems to care about what’s actually inside these screenplays. Hardly any of the scripts are discussed,” Dy writes.
Interestingly enough, one of the most conceptually risky films of MMFF 2021 is a reworking of the rom-com formula, Love at First Stream by Cathy Garcia-Molina, who directed The Hows of Us. It’s easy to dismiss Love at First Stream as a shallow love story packaged to sell the streaming app Kumu and fast food chain Chic-Boy. Characters constantly have to explain how to stream or earn money using the app, whose owners co-produced the movie. Kumu lets streamers earn money via gifts from followers which can be converted to cash. This is what the premise of the film hinges on, as the protagonist desperately wants to move out of her home to escape her controlling mother. Instead of the usual love triangle, Love at First Stream features a love quadrangle, which becomes increasingly volatile as the movie progresses. It makes the film a little more chaotic but its meta approach to love teams is interesting.
The pandemic and the absence of banner films – not to mention the shutdown of ABS-CBN, the country’s largest TV network which is home to the industry’s biggest “love teams” – have stalled production of vehicles for many onscreen tandems. In Love at First Stream some untested actors are showcased and given the chance to build a new wave of love teams. Love at First Stream generally adheres to the Filipino rom-com formula but there are hints that the film wants to mine deeper insights here: how this new generation interacts in both the virtual and real worlds, building relationships in them and out of them (or a confluence of both); and how incentivised behaviour can be both boon and bane in an era where life is mostly experienced online.
Now that the ritual of fandoms takes place online, love teams are also being formed by fans there. The love team of Donny Pangilinan and Belle Mariano (DonBelle) was mainly formed online and has led to a successful string of projects, including what is supposedly the biggest box office hit of 2021, the rom-com Love Is Color Blind. In the film, Pangilinan struggles to finish his deceased mother’s painting after an accident left him colour blind. Mariano, the dutiful best friend/martyr suffers through everything to help and, in the process, make Pangilinan’s character realise their long-gestating destiny as a couple. It’s the usual rom-com fluff, given a new coat of paint by electrifying performances by Mariano and Pangilinan.
The unconventional couple of Kim Molina and Jerald Napoles (KimErald) exists on the flip side of the on-screen pairings. The pair’s look is hilariously cribbed from the KimErald pairing of Kim Chiu and Gerald Anderson – the more conventionally attractive KimErald – as Molina and Napoles aren’t exactly the prototype leads of romantic films. Molina and Napoles are always a thrill to watch, and never to miss a chance to skewer the rom-com tropes that are also being applied to them. They appeared together in three films in 2021: The Woman Who Cannot Feel, On a Restless Night, and You and Me and the End, and each one was different. Out of all the three, it is You and Me and the End that stands out, making use of the pair’s unconventional looks to draw out a story about a criminal and a former prostitute who found love on the cusp of the pandemic. As the world around them empties out, they find a place for their love to blossom.
All three films are produced by Viva Films and appeared on the studio’s streaming platform Vivamax. The tireless production of films by Viva, linked to the pito-pito productions during the 1970s (filmmakers are only given seven days and a small budget for a film), gave birth to the bulk of Filipino films produced in 2021, though their quality varies wildly from awful to watchable. Vivamax also revived the production of sexy Filipino films, which died around the early 2000s – and this makes sense marketing-wise, since Filipinos are among the top users of Pornhub, spending an average of 11 minutes and 31 seconds on the site. At any given day, at least in 2021, the majority of the films on Vivamax’s Top 10 films are sexy films. By the first quarter of 2022, the site had reached 2.5 million subscribers, with ₱1 billion (around US$19 million) allocated for more content. It is undeniable that Vivamax has injected a new life into the film industry. Several filmmakers like Joel Lamangan and Lawrence A. Fajardo have managed to churn more than three films (and counting) for the site. The most productive filmmaker for Vivamax is Darryl Yap, with at least 10 films in 2021. Yap is both currently the most watched and most reviled Filipino filmmaker due to his problematic content, and recently, his support for the presidential bid of the son of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Despite the challenges of 2021, Philippine cinema still made quite a splash in world cinema in 2021. Among the highlights is John Arcilla’s Best Actor win at the Venice Film Festival for On the Job: The Missing 8, an HBO co-production that has recently hit HBO MAX. Wether the Weather Is Fine travelled to high-profile film fests, premiering at the Locarno Film Festival in August, where it won the Cinema e Gioventù Prize, and then moving on to the Toronto International Film Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival. Later, it swept the majority of the awards at the 2021 Metro Manila Film Festival.
Lav Diaz premiered his latest film History of Ha at the BFI London Film Festival in October. In December, it was announced that Martika Ramirez Escobar’s Leonor Will Never Die would compete at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival – the first Filipino film to do so since The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros in 2006 – along with Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan’s short film The Headhunter’s Daughter. Escobar’s film, a tender letter to filmmaking via a story of an action film writer in a coma, won the Special Jury Prize. Eblahan’s Headhunter won the Short Film Grand Jury Prize.
After the MMFF, hardly any Filipino films played on the big screen, with only blockbusters like Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Batman drawing audiences. This March, the lowest Alert Level since the pandemic started has led to maximum capacity for commercial establishments, so there may be hope there. Now that the government is actually drawing up a Covid-19 transition plan, there could be a light at the end of the tunnel. But how long it takes to get through to that end is another matter.
Don Jaucian