Category Archive for: kawomenan

kultura

Kilig down pat in Catch Me I’m In Love

And when I say that this movie proves Sarah Geronimo and Gerald Anderson individually and together have the kilig down pat, it’s that someone my age, with my history of bad love, could actually still get kilig. Yes, kilig to the bones circa 1980s, complete with stomping foot, loud laughter, sinking into my movie seat, nudging elbows with my younger sister (ex-student now friend) beside me, in the end tired from the roller coaster ride that a two hour love story can still be. Kapagod pala kiligin. Some things I’ve forgotten.

In Catch Me I’m In Love, the kilig is difficult to ignore, as it carries what is an otherwise expected story through to its logical happy end. It’s also a surprisingly believable love between a girl and boy who are really only bound by country, and when I say that, I mean the government of the Philippines complete with scenes of Malacañang Palace.

Gerald plays Eric, presidential son, who’s unhappy with being in the Philippines and is sent by the President to a far away provincial community so he may learn of purpose. Eric is accompanied by Roanne (played by Sarah), an NGO worker who deals with nation from the grassroots level, a confident girl who inadvertently shoots down the presidential son at an awarding ceremony in her NGO. She is appointed by the President (Christopher de Leon) to be Eric’s mentor in living with a community he would otherwise not care about.

The rocky start is obvious, even more so in the context of impoverished Isabela: between waking up at 4 AM to walking long distances, Eric was beyond his comfort zones of clubbing, girls, the gym. Never mind, since all that would be forgotten by the time he comes home from Isabela and is in his words, “a better man” because of Roanne. She who challenged his spoiled boy sensibilities, pointed out in cliché terms the fact that what these children in impoverished communities need is time and attention, not money.

Eric was changed by the experience, Roanne was only in her turf. But Roanne’s intelligence and confident stance about nation was happening alongside her crisis as a girl, who wants to stand in front of a boy, and ask him to love her. This she will do at the end of the movie, but in the meantime she is just sad about her status as NBSB (no-boyfriend-since-birth to the unlearned in local pop culture), as she is teased by her three older brothers about it, as she is oblivious to the fact that the rapper neighbor Vito (played so well by Matteo Guidicelli) is trying to court her but doesn’t know how.

Suffice it to say that between Eric’s need to become a better presidential son, and Roanne’s dream (literally) of getting a love life, this movie set it up so it all seemed possible. It also speaks of NGO life and the nation it builds as wonderful, where changing the world begins with talking to people and knowing how they live — a great thing to see in a mainstream commercial movie.

It’s in this setting that the NGO worker and presidential son fall in love, without the trappings of the usual. After another trip where boy surprises girl in Isabela (that’s what I call going the distance), they come home to Roanne’s lower middle class family to tell them the truth: without the process of conventional courtship, they were now together (kami na, in the vernacular).

Which as it turns out is unacceptable to the general public who think Eric to be eligible bachelor, and who will make Roanne subject of tsismis, evil as that becomes: she doesn’t deserve him, she looks like a maid, it won’t last long. To add salt to wound, a socialite who is the complete opposite of Roanne in looks (Sam Pinto) enters the picture and makes like she’s out to win the presidential son. Now Sarah is no ugly girl, in fact she was overwhelmingly Pinay pretty in most the movie. But vis a vis the socialite and the trappings of a presidential dinner she pulls out that social class card and it just works.

In fact discomfort and insecurity is a game that Sarah plays well, and it’s in these moments of crisis that we see how she’s gotten better at acting, allowing us to forget her iconic character Laida Magtalas (her role opposite John Lloyd Cruz). In this movie, Sarah’s role as intelligent NGO worker comes in painful contradiction with the insecure girl-in-love, and when Roanne breaks down and breaks it off with Eric, Sarah proves a broken heart in real life does wonders for one’s acting.

Gerald meanwhile needs to get over the fact of his good looks, and into acting like it doesn’t matter. Because his role here is that of Fil-Am heartthrob, Gerald sometimes seems like he’s playing himself. Yet when he was an arrogant presidential son in the beginning, it actually worked; when he became the gentleman who would carry Roanne on his back because she had a sprained ankle, he knew to balance arrogance with machismo; when he became this boy who’s pushed against the wall by Roanne’s insecurities about herself that brings her to suggest they break up, Gerald’s helplessness as he asked “Kaya mo?” will melt your heart. And let you forget his abs.

Which is what there’s plenty of in this movie, generally un-needed since it’s done in relation to pagsasaka, and Sarah isn’t one to show some skin or have a kissing scene. If the goal was to establish Gerald’s, uh, hotness, then one scene with abs seems enough doesn’t it? Plus there are his good looks, which is used to the hilt in this film; and those eyes, the use of which Gerald has mastered.

Sarah meanwhile, has mastered this role of the lower middle class girl getting paired off with the rich guy, fulfilling the layers of impossibility in love. Now this isn’t a new role at all (think Judy Ann opposite Piolo Pascual, Marian Rivera opposite Dingdong Dantes), but it’s one that’s done only by Sarah in her age bracket. This is all fine, but maybe it’s time to give Sarah something she can sink her teeth into. After Laida and Roanne, it would do commercial audiences well to be shown a role that doesn’t peg Sarah to financial and emotional immobility because of love. Maybe a role that doesn’t put such a premium on the latter, and lets the intelligence and independence shine? Maybe a movie that stars as well that bunch of supporting characters who make for Star Cinema movies.

Ketchup Eusebio and Janus del Prado play two of Roanne’s brothers here. These two were not only comic relief, they point to the value of supporting characters that hold the main story up, and remind us of the travesties that surround the fact of star power in this country. That the infinitely talented Eusebio and del Prado are not starring in commercial films has become normal to us. That I dream for these two a bigger project, becomes possible given a star like Sarah, who I think will ably carry a film all her own, maybe with Eusebio and del Prado as (gay) friends to a Sarah without a big time love interest, if with love at all. Now that would be a powerful image, wouldn’t it. One that hasn’t been done before. Ah, the dreaming is what happens after the kilig.

komentaryo

no, being hospitable ain’t cutting it anymore

when you’re told point blank by a foreigner, and with all honesty instead of malice, that they don’t know anything about Manila, that when he told his friends he wanted to go there they asked “Why?”, that in fact Manila is at the bottom of his list of cities to see, how do you even respond? it gets worse, too. you’re asked do you enjoy Manila? is it a safe city? the answer to the first question is easy of course.

sometimes my honesty does get the better of me. especially since i know they’d see i’m lying through my teeth otherwise.

Tatsu Nishi (Japan) covers up the iconic Merlion, making it into a hotel room.

the happy giddy context of wine in our bodies and the Merlion all covered up by a red box shall save the day: we talk about art in Manila given the art that’s here, Louie Cordero’s paean to the urban legend of videoke singing of My Way, Mark Salvatus’ interest in empty walls and capturing what’s untraceable in people. we talk about the absurdity of what they’ve seen in Manila: a Virgin Mary portrait that is actually made up of words of the Old Testament that you can only read through a magnifying glass (i want to know where that exactly is), the Socialist Bar in Manila where a naive foreigner could only walk into (no it’s not really socialist eh?).

we talk about their horror stories: of walking through the city itself of Manila, across the stretch of CCP and realizing that lamp posts slowly but surely ceased to be lit. of being told by their family and friends to keep safe by hiding their cellphones and ipods, by not wearing any jewelry at all. both of them were men who’ve gone to Manila on almost adventures. and despite the horrible hotel service at Clark Pampanga both (because now they know me, we say) are thinking of going back there and doing things differently, give it another chance.

and then faced with a man who knows nothing about the Philippines, he says. and who, in the middle of talking about Jollibee and Manny Pacquiao, Apl D Ap and carjacking (yes you fall back on all that), says excitedly: oh the au pairs! that is your contribution to the world. he then goes on to talk about his au pair who played favorites, of friends who had au pair trouble. and i could only but mention nurses and teachers, and thank the heavens for the New Yorker from Japan who had a grade three Filipino homeroom teacher, Ms. Caoili (god bless her), who was just wonderful she says.

but there is no escaping Manila and its stereotypes, especially because i could not for the life of me say they weren’t true. i couldn’t lie and say that walking through the streets of and around CCP was safe, given that still stark media memory of the bus hostage taking. i couldn’t say that if they looked at a map, they could go through the galleries and museums across Makati City, and they’d be fine: the lack of a map is contingent on the lack of order that would otherwise protect pedestrians, local and foreign after all. i couldn’t say just come — COME to Manila! it’s totally different from what you imagine.

Louie Cordero's "My We" at the Singapore Biennale 2011

because what if it’s exactly the same as, or worse than, what they imagine.

that they imagine the worst of Manila is just sad, but also it is not unexplainable. you only walk the streets of one of the safest cities like Singapore and you know that there must be something we can do about our own city. you think of Bangkok or Hanoi or Phnom Penh or New Delhi, and while it might be easy to imagine the dangers of these spaces as well, it still seems a lot safer.

or maybe its vibrant cultural images are just more concrete, more real. it seems that the dangers of a third world city (country) are balance out by a sense of its cultural vibrancy, its ability to speak of itself strongly and concretely to be about something, that something making it worthy of a visit, that something as its best cultural product and production, its best tourist attraction.

you want Manila (and the Philippines) to be a tourist destination? let’s begin by agreeing on how we’re selling it and what we’re going to say about its cultural productions. stop making it seem like the cheapest country in the world: because we know how cheap means two things.

and realize that really, being hospitable doesn’t cut it anymore. nor do our notion(s) of diversity and being free-for-all.

kultura

OPT: original Pinoy talent

because Orosman at Zafira is all-original: music, lyrics, talent.

and even when Rent 2011 is obviously an American text, there is here, real Pinoy talent.

both reviews are up at gmanewsonline!

kultura

unexpected romances

I’ve been told with disdain that I have too much hope for local movies, puwede namang hintayin na lang na ipalabas saTV ang pelikula.

But it isn’t with hope that I go to the cinemas to watch Pinoy films. It is with excitement, always: I enter a cinema willing to be surprised, having as context what is usual or normal for movies on our shores. It isn’t with notion(s) of hope, as it is with a sense of how things have changed, and how there are still plenty of possibilities.

So I was willing to be surprised by My Valentine Girls (Regal Films and GMA Films), the trailer of which promised a trilogy, one that’s rarely done for romantic comedies these days, unless we count as love stories too the overdone Shake Rattle & Roll horror franchise.

The conclusions for this movie are easy, the enjoyment even more so. I chalk it up to two things: one, the limited amount of time for each episode made for storytelling that was quick, with no minute wasted on long stretches of nothing; two, creative directors are all you need, the ones who have a sense of how love stories are supposed to look, how comfortable love can be, and how sexual tension need not be about pretty boys and girls, and rarely happens in the most ideal of moments. It’s also never easy.

My only question is: who was directing the story beyond the three episodes? Richard Guttierez plays a writer with a deadline, and we are treated to his novel-in-progress by quick shifts to the three love stories within it.

the rest is here!

kultura

this saturday, art in the park!

The past two years of going around art exhibits and events have taught me two things. One, no matter how much I love a work of art, I will never be able to afford it. Such is the tragedy of my writing about art: spectatorship isn’t ownership unless I delude myself into thinking exactly that. Two, pre-exhibit write-ups aren’t my cup of tea. Many people are trained and/or like this kind of writing; I feel like it impedes upon my spectatorship of any art form.

But there is one event I can’t resist, and that is the Art in the Park project of the Museum Foundation of the Philippines. It might be because of the lightness with which art is spoken of here, or maybe the fact that it brings art outside the galleries and makes it a public Saturday event, at the Velasquez Salcedo Park in Makati and nearby spaces. It even brings back Concert in the Park, with jazz musicians performing this year.

It’s also this year that there’s an excitement in the variety unlike ever before. At a table in a quiet French restaurant, the women of Art in the Park and plenty of us female writers laughed and chatted like giddy schoolgirls.

click for the rest of it up at gmanewsonline! :)