One More Try (Ruel S. Bayani)

Try and try and try...

I thought it will be different. I thought that, with this film, Star Cinema would temporarily veer away from their uncontrollable obsession for infidelity. I thought that, for once, here's something that will infinitely be more sensible compared to the said film outfit's recent products. But no, "One More Try", an official Metro Manila Film Festival entry, has merely used some medical excuse in the form of severe aplastic anemia so that they can push forth their mouth-foaming inclination towards anything extramarital and morally questionable yet again. 

     

But before we move on with the review, the obligatory synopsis first: Dingdong Dantes' Edward is happily married to Angelica Panganiban's Jacq. Along then comes Angel Locsin's Grace, a woman who had a brief romantic relationship with Edward and is now mothering the fruit of their love (they had a child, alright) somewhere in Baguio, asking for Edward's help. 

     

The child, much to the very motherly sadness of Grace, is inflicted with a kind of life-threatening illness that can only be cured by bone marrow transplant and Edward is the only possible donor. But the catch is this: Edward is incompatible to give his marrow and the only other cure is to get it from a second, still non-existent child. To conceive the baby, they first tried in vitro fertilization but it failed. The only remaining option, as what Carmina Villaroel's irritating 'Doctora' character has stated, is for Grace to be impregnated through the 'natural way'. Meaning, Edward and Grace must have sex once more, much to the complication, of course, of their respective relationships and their lives. All four main characters (including Zanjoe Marudo's immaterial character Tristan: Grace's beau)

     

While the establishment of "One More Try's" scenario is quite provocative, the film, as it goes along, transitions from interesting to slightly plausible to idiotically preposterous. Sure, the film has raised certain moral questions regarding this very difficult psycho-sexual predicament, but the way the characters were realized is so irrational and obtuse that they ultimately looked ridiculous and unintentionally hilarious despite of the film's self-serious tone. 

     

Okay sure, some may argue that "One More Try" is indeed a cinematic essay about the idiocy of love, and I may be missing the point. But be informed, the idiocy of love is really different from sheer simple-mindedness. Specifically, I am pertaining to Angelica Panganiban's character who, despite of her being an epitome of an intelligent career woman, has quickly allowed Grace to enter their married life, knowing that situations will subsequently conspire against her. 

     

From where I look at it, I think that "One More Try's" ultimate flaw is not on the direction (by Ruel S. Bayani) or the performances. In fact, the performances range from good to great. It is, in actuality, on the screenplay itself, which has allowed its own characters act upon a crucial situation with sheer lack of logic and thought. 

And then, after much emotional despair and lots of tears, all of a sudden, the film jumped into a heavily sugar-coated happy ending that's ever-characteristic of every Star Cinema films. Plus, I found out through research that there's an alternative treatment for severe aplastic anemia other than the bone marrow transplant called immunosuppression, which has little to no 'early mortality' rate. 

     

Well, if that's the case, the whole dilemma raised by the film is all for naught. We have been fooled, it ultimately seems. Carmina's doctor character may have been the one needing some hair-pulling and bitch-slapping and not the main characters. But medically-speaking, is there really a need for conflict? 

(Note: As I'm writing this review, I just found out that the film has won the Festival Best Picture. Congratulations, but the film could have been better or, if my research will prove to be quite right, even easily invalid.)

FINAL RATING

 

All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar)

Cecilia Roth as Manuela.

With the brilliant "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" being the Pedro Almodovar film I've watched prior to this, his exploration of the unparalleled emotional strength of women, at least in my self-chronology, continues on with "All About My Mother", a film that lightly caresses your heart with its poignancy but also puts into humorous situations after another the subtle absurdity of life. Although it's Almodovar's witty screenplay that is the film's beating heart, it's the sheer talent of its cast that has fueled it with pure and unbridled energy.

Performances by Cecilia Roth, who played the main character Manuela, a single-parent hardened by the terrible highs and lows of life, Marisa Paredes as the stage actress Huma Rojo, Penelope Cruz who contrasts all the other performances with her subdued turn as Sister Rosa, and especially Antonia San Juan's colorful portrayal of the character Agrado (the best performance in the film), a person whose socially unacceptable transsexualism never hindered her from being an optimistic representation of a hard-living modern woman, sweeten the screen with a unique vigor for life.

The film's title, "All About My Mother", when you look at how the narrative has unveiled itself, does not fully suggest that the film is indeed purely about Manuela's individual exploits as she searches on to locate her son's father and as she takes care of numerous colorful characters. With the use of the possessive pronoun 'My', which of course pertains to Manuela's son Esteban, who before dying in a tragic car accident wishes to know who his father is and who, after death, may have continued to look down upon her mother as she copes up with his death, with her quest and with life itself, it suggests that the story is spiritually progressing through Esteban's birthright to know his father. So the film, in essence, does not merely get its life force from Manuela alone, but also from the memory of Esteban's final wish.

"All About My Mother" is, in context, a humanist adventure fueled by a two-sided notion for a tribute: One given by the already omniscient Esteban in an underlying manner, who flowers up her mother's endeavors by means of his prose taken from his diary, and one by Manuela herself as she tries to keep the fire burning in Esteban's torch of memory by way of fulfilling his dying wish: To find his father.

Unlike the later "Goodbye, Lenin!", a film from which we rarely see the character of the mother but infinitely more of her son as he desperately find ways to fend off any shock or surprises that may worsen her health, "All About My Mother" views this idea of a parent-child relationship in an opposite way by championing the concept of a mother's love to her son (instead of the other way around), but in an equally unconditional light.

In the film's entirety, its urgency is more inclined towards the dramatic rather than the comic. Of course, the spontaneity of the more humorous moments adds to the film's effective tonal shifts from colorful to gray and vice versa, but "All About My Mother" is infinitely more important to be absorbed as a drama that articulates the emotional context of promises, mistakes and reconciliations rather than as a comedy of blunders, innuendos and homosexuality. Nonetheless, the film works in either way.

But what has slightly put me off about the film, on the other hand, is its running time. Pedro Almodovar greeted our senses with exuberant, highly original characters yet ends the film with suddenness. It's one thing for a film to end and for us to want more, but to ask for more plainly because something lacks is another. I don't know what I've felt between the two when the film has ended, but I surely would have loved the film more if it would have been a bit longer, and I don't care if the conflict is already resolved. Well, on second thought, maybe it's just delusion.

FINAL RATING

A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes)

Gena Rowlands as Mabel Longhetti.

Great films like "Sunset Blvd." and "Psycho". They have both shown 'madness' in a way both disturbing and doomed, uncontrollably fatal and in brutal askew. Both pictures solidified the fact, with utter exclamatory conviction, that being in such a mental state is synonymous with being 'done for' and you can't really do anything but inhabit its very delirious core. And although the latter statement was still further raised by "A Woman Under the Influence", this film, directed with raw attention to the essence of the story and characters rather than the overall aesthetics by John Cassavetes, is a revolutionary break-out party (a bit hyperbolic, I must admit) to the hidden side of this seemingly over-used cinematic theme of psychosis: That madness can also serve as a familial balance.

Peter Falk, which I have first seen playing himself in "Wings of Desire", delivered an unforgettable, emotionally powerful and quite underrated performance as the husband Nick. The character is a blue-collar worker striving to keep his family together, and by the sight of his sublimely pleading eyes, he means good for everyone. He immensely loves Mabel (Gena Rowlands), his wife, and his children even more so. But he is quite weary of Mabel and her slow drift into a self-losing basket case.

His weariness is quite valid, after all, and with the help of the shaky camera utilized by Cassevetes that sometimes even goes out of focus, he has established Mabel's initial sequence as she, panting, exaggerated, and worried, assists her children as they go with their grandmother into her car to go to her house. "I shouldn't have let 'em go", uttered by Mabel. This sequence, although it shows her unusual redundancy, does not really highlight her insanity but shows her neurotic tendencies. As we see her repeat instructions, mostly about her children's well-being and safety, and fast talk her way to her mother's attention, Gena Rowlands depicts Mabel's personality with a slight slant of ambiguity: Does she really mean every word?

"A Woman Under the Influence" is infused with such incredible sequences after another, mostly dominated by Ms. Rowlands' weird, pathetically disorienting glib of tongue. She wants to entertain Nick's friends. She immerses into childhood persona just to make children laugh. But ultimately, she is marked by sadness. Yes, she is mentally unstable, but did she ever wanted to be in such a condition?

Then, in a tolling decision lifted by frustration and exhaustion on Nick's part, he sent her to a mental institution. He then tries to care for his children himself. But as shown by the significant sequence in the beach, shot within a considerable distance and with a point of view not leveled to an adequate position, the film showed Nick's incompetence as an affecting parent. Of course, he loves his children more than anything else, but with things that needs tenderness and detailed caring, he is gravely lacking.

Through this sequence, not only was it suggested that Nick really misses his wife with her free-willing interaction with their kids, John Cassavetes, with his great characterization of Mabel, also made us audience miss her. Despite the deterioration of her mental health, as she left their house and was committed to an institution, she also left a hole in her family. For once we see, after her erratic mental episodes, her encompassing influence to Nick and their children. Her utility. Her vitality.

After watching "A Woman Under the Influence", I thought that the film is really much more about the essential presence of a mother in a family rather than it is about the complexity of madness. Yes, beneath its sheer depiction of deafening attempts to control an insanity-inflicted individual and its uneasy portrayal of mental instability, it's centered in the significance of a caring matriarch. Mabel may be raving mad, she may shout senseless phrases and dance in the tune of the "Swan Lake" atop a couch, but her importance echoes throughout the four corners of their house all the same.

And as suggestively shown in the final scene approached with a sense of suburban calm, Nick and Mabel will always stride to strive. And as they make their bed and close the curtains, they, after all that have transpired, are still in one piece. That is until something else do them part.

FINAL RATING

Good Bye, Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker)

'Oh well, goodbye then'.

I was quite weary before watching this film as I haven't been that familiar with the history of German division aside from the fall of Berlin Wall and well, Reagan's famous 'tear down this wall' speech. But "Good Bye, Lenin!", with a narrator (that's also the film's protagonist) that seem far too poetic at times but ultimately convincing, delivered the necessary information with a tone of mundane deliberateness to highlight the character's naturalism for audiences to follow the film's political background closely .

It's as if there's a far more important theme to tackle other than socialist intricacies. But of course, there is: An enduring story of a son's love to his mother devoid of any conditionals.

After his socialist mother (Katrin Sass in an impressive performance) has awakened from an 8-month comma due to a heart attack, Alex (played by Daniel Bruhl, whom you may recognize as Frederick Zoller in the later Tarantino film "Inglourious Basterds"), who have learned from the doctor that his mother shouldn't be shocked or hooked into excitement in any way whatsoever as it may result to complications, is eager to keep her home. But complications is never just a health dilemma. The Berlin Wall has fallen. It's now one Germany, and the stocks of Spreewald gherkins has cruised into scarcity. Her mother's reality has turned into a unified land filled with alien capitalism.

He faced the situation with a calm demeanor and absurdist resolute, and helped by his friend and aspirant filmmaker Denis (Florian Lukas, who's like a cross between Robert Carlyle and a younger Ed Harris), decided to re-create GDR in ingenious kinds of ways as to prevent her mother from having the heart-thumping revelation of her life. A well-intended deception heightened by comedy. A 'comedy' that surely roots out from social idealism (the mother) suppressed by empirical determination.

Director Wolfgang Becker directed these sequences with uncommon energy and quirks that the first hour of the film flowed so effortlessly with quick pace, ease and story-telling delight. Yet from those elements mainly conceived from clever concepts and scenarios, "Good Bye, Lenin!" is still focused in its human drama.

It's less a politically-toned film than it is a penetrating study of connection (Alex's family), re-connection (the father sub-plot) and disconnection (from A horrid emotional past and the attachment to the GDR). Of course, from the point of view of a German who have experienced the social atmosphere of East/West Germany, "Good Bye, Lenin!" is mainly affecting due to the countless nostalgic references to olden times and the euphoric destruction of separatist sentiments. But from those way outside looking in (like me), what's very special with this film is its balance of happiness and melancholy by way of how it highlights the fun of liberty and the anguish of mistakes.

"Good Bye, Lenin!" is very eloquent on all sides, capturing the essential 'celebratory' mood of reunified Germany and the irony of the countless ruins and how it tries to accommodate its reverberated surroundings in desperate vain, especially how the wrecked Lenin statue hanging below a helicopter seems to communicate something to Alex's mother (one of the many great scenes in the film) as if asking for forgiveness or asking for her hand and saying, 'my child, my deeply socialist child, come with me'.

From its shifting pace to comic moments and times of tears, "Good Bye, Lenin!" has been strongly consistent with the entirety of its delivery and it has rendered a political reverie-turned reality into a convincing world of varied emotions and where euphemistic acceptance is a possibility. And moreover, departing from the complexities, the film is, simply put, a lasting love letter to all mothers who have loved their children unlike any other.

FINAL RATING