QCinema returns with seven new original features, another seven new shorts, and a pretty solid selection of both local and foreign films for exhibition. The festival is screening films in four venues: Gateway, Trinoma, Robinsons Galleria, and UP Town Center. As usual, I’ll be reviewing films as I see them.
The festival opened with Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, which was adapted from Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith. Right from the start, this is a film that lets you know that you can’t take anything at face value. It at first seems to be the story of a young Korean woman named Okju (Tae Ri Kim), who in the first scene of the film is seem tearfully saying goodbye to what appears to be her family. She is taken to a remote, opulent manor housing a rich, sheltered young heiress (Kim Min-hee) for whom she will be serving as a personal maid. And then right away, the film suddenly reveals that Okju is actually Nam Sookee, a petty thief whose mother was a legendary criminal. She’s working with another con man posing as a Japanese count (Ha Jung-woo), trying to convince the heiress to marry the count, so that they can eventually lock her up in a madhouse and take all her money.
That’s all established in the first twenty minutes of the film. And then things only get stranger and more twisted from there. This film feels somewhat like a culmination of director Park’s film work. The obsessions that seeped their way into his previous films are all in full display here. It is fully bonkers: a completely unique erotic thriller with grand gothic aesthetics that also manages to play with layers of intriguing post-colonial context. This feels like Park Chan-wook evolving into his final form. The director, who could never be accused of holding anything back, opens the floodgates wider, pouring out a torrent of distinct cinematic personality.
The first of the Circle Competition films to screen is Bagane Fiola’s Baboy Halas, which comes to us from Mindanao. It mainly focuses on a Lumad hunter and his efforts to provide for his family. He goes into the jungle alone, armed with a bow and arrow and his spear, hunting wild boar. All the while, our hunter is losing himself in the wilderness. Along the way, the film also documents the way of life of the Lumad, depicting Animist rituals and looking into the way they resolve conflict both personal and tribal.
I think the best word to describe the film is “Immersive.” It isn’t always clear what’s happening. The film doesn’t offer the kind of narrative clarity that one might expect from a feature film. It functions on its own unique rhythm, dancing forward in vague, almost mystical ways. There are moments that are absolutely captivating: an extended scene of the main character trying to negotiate with fire and the spirit that he believes is in it, for example. Or there’s the camera suddenly zooming way out to reveal the smallness of the character in relation to the wilderness that surrounds him. There are all these moments of intriguing transcendence, ones that appropriately reflect that characters’ relationship with the unknown. But as a whole package, the film does feel frustrating at times. One can get lost just trying to follow what’s going on, which is really saying something since there really isn’t much plot at all.
Allan C. Balberona’s Alaalang Walang Malay is in the Pinoy Spotlight section, which showcases other independent productions from around the country. There is somewhat of a plot to this film, following a small cast of characters investigating the effects of mining on the water of a community. But that’s something one has to pick out from a set of barely-connected scenes. The film opens, for example, on a young boy being told by his doctor that h shouldn’t be on the computer all the time. Later, there’s a scene of a gig somewhere. The band’s music plays as the camera looks off into space, blurry blobs of light dancing in the darkness.
Describing experimental work to people is always a challenge. Describing singular scenes out of context is a pretty poor way of capturing what it is that the work does. What this film does cannot fully be put into the words. Like the title suggests, this all kind of plays out like a memory. The film at times drills in one what might seem like the most insignificant detail of any given event. And then it takes those fragments and builds something stranger and more affecting, constructing a complex portrait of memory that points to a history that is all the more sad for its lack of clarity. It all feels a little rough around the edges, and it certainly isn’t for everyone. But this feels like a formidable work, its pieces really thought through.
QCinema’s also showing some of the films from previous editions. I missed the documentaries last year because I was in Tokyo, so I decided to check out Will Fredo’s Traslacion: Ang Paglakad sa Altar ng Alanganin. The film is basically a bunch of interviews with various same-sex couples in the Philippines. It has its subjects talking about their stories and how they deal with the various challenges that come with being a same-sex couple in a country that legally rejects their union.
And it’s really just a bunch of talking heads. The subject matter is interesting, but a succession of interviews just doesn’t make for very compelling cinema. The film tries to break up the visual tedium with these silent staged scenes that look and feel awkward. There’s also some footage taken from the procession from The Feast of the Black Nazarene. That kind of footage is always remarkable, but the relevance here is tangential at best. The worst part is the music, which is just poured all over every frame of the film, openly indicating what it wants the audience to feel. The worst part is when the subjects start talking about sex, and the musical cue is a faux-porny bass driven slow jam. There is merit in the argument being in the movie, but I don’t think the movie makes an eloquent case.
