Thy Womb (Brillante Mendoza)

Love and marriage.

Although the most highly-honored Filipino film director of all time (he has won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2009), Brillante Mendoza is without a doubt also the most divisive one. With a body of work that range from the sexually controversial "Serbis" to the shockingly violent "Kinatay", Mendoza is, in a way, an icon of cinematic polarization. Some see him as a maverick hack, but some (including yours truly) also see him as a most important filmmaker whose cinematic unpredictability and rough-edged approach to filmmaking exemplify what modern, eye-opening cinema should be. 

     

"Here is a film that forces me to apologize to Vincent Gallo for calling "The Brown Bunny" the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival," says Roger Ebert, arguably the most famous film critic in the world, while pertaining to Mendoza's "Kinatay". In a way, the negative reception that his films often receive can fairly be attributed to his film's elliptical nature and explicit content. But his latest film "Thy Womb", an official Metro Manila Film Festival Entry and is also a return acting effort from Nora Aunor, may very well be a solid proof of how visually and thematically eloquent Brillante Mendoza really is as a filmmaker even without venturing into the world of violence and fornication. Well, to be exact, he has already exercised his prowess as an intrinsically fine filmmaker by way of his earlier films like "Kaleldo" and "Lola". But for the record, "Thy Womb" is his first film in a very long time that does not wear poverty as some kind of an exploitative mask. Instead, what it has truthfully donned is the entirety of a culture and a tradition, and I can't say that I was disappointed by how he has pulled it off. 

     

Set in a fishing village in Tawi-Tawi, "Thy Womb" is an inexorably rich and humanistic portrait of the island's humble beauty. On paper, it seems that Brillante Mendoza, a most rugged filmmaker, may just be, well, too visually 'rough' to handle a story that's set in a place of such delicate and picturesque beauty. On the contrary, his style proves to be just perfect, and so are the principal actors involved. Bembol Roco, for example, who for the past years has been merely relegated to villainous roles, is very, very believable as Bangas-An, a Badjao fisherman who, along with his infertile midwife of a spouse Shaleha (Nora Aunor), embarks on a search for a new bride who will hopefully bear their first child. Yes, you've heard that correctly, "Thy Womb" is a story of a couple searching for a fertile second wife. 

     

Often laborious but also, to a certain extent, quite humorous, their small adventure to find a second wife is marked with a hint of inevitability and such calm resolve that it's almost impossible not to feel awkward while witnessing how the couple's story unfolds. Now, compare that to its MMFF competition "One More Try"; an almost similar story, same dilemma (kind of), but two different emotional responses: silent acceptance from Nora Aunor's character; mouth-foaming diatribes from Angelica Panganiban's. That's cultural disparity right there. 

     

Nora Aunor, one of the greatest actresses of our time, plays the infertile wife with such hopefulness and acceptance (seen mainly through her ever-eloquent eyes) that, sometimes, watching her brave great lengths just to find her husband a new wife is a bit painful to sit through. Some may even brand her character as a full-fledged martyr by doing so, but we must also bear in mind that she is a devout Muslim, and what she is doing is not just according to her heart's content but also to her religion's. So with an objective camera lens to capture it all, Brillante Mendoza, armed with an uncharacteristically poetic visual sensibility, makes us feel the strains of such a situation without handing down any judgments. 

     

For a country of great religious divide like the Philippines, it's almost impossible to sanction acts in a univocal light, and "Thy Womb" just goes to show that an extramarital scandal in one religion can just be interpreted as nothing but pure tradition in another. And for Brillante Mendoza, a filmmaker whose works are characterized by images of great sociopolitical decay, it's refreshing to see that he has finally took on a story of great sociocultural relevance. "Thy Womb", despite its tendencies to beat around the bushes, is a lyrical film that resonates far beyond its geographic boundaries. Finally, Brillante Mendoza has graduated from poverty porn to do something entirely different but just as powerful. Well, hopefully at least.

FINAL RATING

'Merika (Gil Portes)

Contemplating a decision.

Combining suspicious love with the sentiments and longing of America-dwelling Filipinos whose minds and hearts continually goes through conflicts of decisions, some slight politics that highlights helpless idealism and the brewing turmoil of 80's Philippines, you get "'Merika". It stars Nora Aunor and Bembol Roco, which gave effectively contrasting performances regarding the different sides of state of minds of Filipinos on foreign lands.

We see Bembol's character Mon embrace and patronize the commercial and financial advantages of living in 'Tate' with some sort of distorted pragmatism, even going as far as calling the Philippines as an 'impractical hell'. This is where Bembol Roco really shined through the whole film. He displayed this closeted arrogance and colonial mindset with suppressed aggressiveness. He announces his extreme admiration with the American way of life with depleted shouts and air of mystery, fancying wines yet with glaring eyes that suggests something ominously deficient in his wholeness: He does not have any legal papers.

I cannot say that he is the direct antagonist of the film; his Mon is a very complicated character trapped in a situation that he is willing to get out of but has seemingly accepted a long time ago. He goes on a cycle of foreign existence, treading luxuries of expensive wines and credited cars. Yet, I still think he wants love more than anything else; it's just that he's too consumed by the minute details of the ideal, commercial western lifestyle that he considers the rest of his narrow world nothing more than minuscule.

Even before Mr. Bembol Roco triggered his persona as a stereotypical villain, psychotically speaking, of Philippine cinema, I think this is his most ambiguously villainous performance in the sense of how his character considerably preys on everything advantageous, yet through his eyes, there's a hint of a primordial defeat. In a sense, he has embraced not just the entirety of the American way, but also his embittered helplessness. Finding Mila (Nora Aunor's character), he located a two-way victory: Easy romance and his papers. His two ways versus her existential crossroad.

Nora Aunor's Mila is a striving nurse that gets more than enough income but less than enough sense of belonging. Again, like most of her characters on screen, Mila is torn between the budding idea of love (that teeters between quiet desperation and sexual victory) and a clamor for the true one (the Philippines. Yes, sentimental it maybe, but it's how it is) she has left behind. Mila is, in some ways, the 'Dorothy' to America's 'Oz'. She discovered the ease of income, the company of some friends, and the pure wonder of commercialism at its peak, like how Dorothy befriended some colorful eccentrics and established herself as a figure for the further adventures of the yellow brick road.

It may seem unsound to compare a timeless fantasy tale to a film dealing with the confusion of one's foreign integration, but it's the first analogy that came into my mind. And though 'Oz' came out much more colorful than the sepia-toned Kansas, Dorothy couldn't have said it better: "There's no place like home."

"'Merika", penned by Doy Del Mundo Jr. and Gil Quito and directed by Gil Portes, does not necessarily discourage those trying their lucks to align themselves with the promises of 'Tate'. It has shown different perspectives, and though Mila, the chief protagonist, ultimately came into a critical decision, the film strengthened its stance that it was her choice and hers alone; the film instead divulge the idea of easement and hope and the grounded summation that individualism and a concrete goal are the ones that are truly vital against alienating anxieties more than anything else. With that thematic direction, I think "'Merika" highly succeeded.

FINAL RATING

Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Mario O'Hara)

Chance.

Not so long ago, I finally came into a certain understanding that Filipino films will always be inclined into 'melodrama': The sappy music, intense displays of physical animation to accompany the drama, and of course, tears. It's a nauseating phenomenon in the Philippine movie industry when absolutely done the wrong way. But thank god there are films such as "Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos" to serve as timeless testaments to the magic that 'melodrama' can create and manifest within one's senses and emotions, from simple to complex, when done perfectly.

The film started with Hitler's rhyming, mouth-foaming speech regarding the strength of his socialist party. Being set in the times of the Second World War, the film unveils like how a history text book would for a student. But after this run-of-the-mill introduction, its story unfolds like how a poet affects to even the farthest of souls.

In plain sight, the film may look like your typical 'love caught by the tides of war' and a period vehicle for its star and producer, Nora Aunor. Granted, the love story arc is already established prior to the complications of the narrative, but I am deeply surprised and pleasured how complex the film really was.

At various points, "Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos" can be viewed as a metaphor for the ravages and ruins that the Philippines (The idea of the motherland may allude to Nora Aunor's (subtly powerful, as always) character Rosario and her initial abuse in the hands of Masugi, played by Christopher De Leon) have experienced during the Japanese Occupation and, on the opposite end, the potentially unconscious development of the Philippines' slow embrace towards the Japanese ways (how Rosario learned to love Masugi after she has been raped).

And pushing it further, Bembol Roco's character Crispin is the physical manifestation of the concept of a true 'Filipino' who, despite of the predicament that his real love (Rosario) has gone through, remained completely absent and consumed by fighting an abstract notion towards an illusory, national deliverance. The film may also relate to a slightly satiric approach to some Filipinos' extreme devotion to the perpetually clean-cut view of America and their intervention.

Mario O'Hara, a primed director and a memorable actor by his own right due to his performance in Brocka's "Tinimbang ka ngunit kulang", created this film with a certain honesty and a hint for something new. He dared not to mold a war film with old clays of sentiments and melancholy. He instead established a fresh foundation to the film, making the complexity of love and the ambiguity of Catholicism its true center and added up the hypnotically repugnant, yet may have been quite accurate, emotional weather of the time.

"Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos" never settled for a one-sided rally behind patriotism's usual sweet myth-making; director Mario O'Hara treated the Filipino people (that includes the Guerrillas) not as hopeful revolutionaries that can almost dwell on the pages of a legend, but as a confused crowd dipped into a mudflow of fever and hysteria: looking for even the slightest mistakes, violently ditching even the slightest idea of a socially unsanctioned love, and pointing fingers to even the slightest of flaws.

Nora's Rosario, on the other hand, served as their martyr; their miniature 'Joan of Arc' to make up for the futility of their distorted search for something meaningful. A senseless pervasion of mobocracy masquerading as a push for Philippines' well-being and disguised as a search for national identity.

The film covered so much, yet it came out as a simple tragedy of love. Deep analysis or surface viewing, either way, "Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos" is still a tremendous work of Philippine cinema. Where is film preservation when it's needed most? This film begs for a better print. Too bad it's too late.

FINAL RATING