For Part I (covering Ang Duyan Ng Magiting, Maria, and Huling Palabas), go here.
All images from the Cinemalaya website.
Rookie
Dir: Samantha Lee
By now, you know what you’re getting with Samantha Lee, Filipino cinema’s premier active purveyor of Sapphic kilig. Having helmed two of the previous decade’s most beloved queer romances in Baka Bukas and Billie and Emma, Lee is well-practiced in the rhythms of cinema romance, particularly the delicate balancing act required to execute the Pinoy rom-com formula while still feeling fresh: A little bit of screwball, a skosh of Wattpad, but not too much sap as to spoil the whole thing. It sounds simple, but it’s an easy recipe to botch. Fortunately, Rookie is yet another light and airy confection that’s earned its buzz as a crowd-pleaser par excellence.
The film doesn’t reinvent the wheel for Lee—why fix something that isn’t broken?—but it does see her surround her central romance with a fuller coming-of-age. The film centers around Ace (Pat Tingjuy), a gangly transferee who is convinced to sign up for volleyball because her new school doesn’t have a basketball team. As she acclimates to the game, she develops a budding romance with team captain Jana (Aya Fernandez), who is as intense about the game as Ace is initially apathetic. Together, the two navigate college scouts, skeevy PTs, and their own combustive feelings for each other.
True to its feel-good leanings, the film doesn’t concern itself too much with the standard frictions of growing up queer in a small town. Aside from a few tsk-tsking priests and nuns, everyone is immediately accepting of the couple, and when Ace comes forward with her story of being abused by a powerful male, everyone who matters immediately believes her and takes responsibility for their own negligence. The whole thing is more than a little bit wish fulfillment, and I don’t fault it for it. There are more than enough dark and gritty Filipino films about gay and female angst; the most gently radical thing about Rookie is how it dares to invite us to imagine a world where people can be and (for the most part) are better.
Yes, the script does take a few narrative short cuts to get to the main plot—for one, how does a new recruit who literally does not know how to play the sport of volleyball immediately make the starting lineup?—but if the vibe is wish-fulfillment Wattpad romance, that kind of screenplay chicanery feels almost fitting.
Grade: 4/5 volleyballs
Iti Mapukpukaw (The Missing)
Dir: Carl Joseph Papa
It’s difficult not to teeter into hyperbole when describing Iti Mapukpukaw, Carl Joseph Papa’s miraculous new animated feature. A rotoscope-animated magic realist fable about how childhood trauma can still eat away at us long after childhood until we find the strength to confront it, it is a beautifully observed and achingly told story of struggle and reclamation that seamlessly weaves together style and substance without losing itself in metaphor. One could call it a bolt of lightning for how revelatory it is if that didn’t also misrepresent how gentle and intimate the whole thing is. By my estimation, it is the best Filipino film from the new decade thus far.
Eric (Carlo Aquino) is a Manila-based animator living a normal if subdued life, complete with a boy (Gio Gahol) he likes, a mother (Dolly de Leon) who dotes on him, and a job he tolerates. However, he (literally) does not have a mouth, communicating with others through a portable whiteboard hanging from his neck. After discovering the body of his uncle while paying him a visit, Eric begins to lose more body parts as the “alien” from his past who took his mouth returns to collect. In order to save himself before he withers into nothing, Eric embarks on a journey to confront the bogeyman and discover a new way of living with his dark past.
That already out-there plot summary doesn’t even begin to convey the delights both big and small that make up the film: A dreamy concoction of Adobe Illustrator backdrops, dick-shaped alien villains, mixed-style animation, extended Nickelback references, and a whip-smart metaphor for the corroding effects of trauma at its center. Deftly vacillating between sci-fi and slice-of-life, the film is both indelibly fantastical and eminently familiar, realistically depicting not just the tumult of a breakdown but the fallout it can create among loved ones simply doing their best to understand.
Even amid a solid Cinemalaya slate, this is a head-and-shoulders standout and a watershed moment in both Philippine animation and cinema writ large. Don’t miss it.
Grade: 4.5/5 phallic aliens
As If It’s True
Dir: John Rogers
John Rogers’s As If It’s True traffics in the blurred lines between reality and fiction in the social media age, and if it doesn’t have a ton of new things to say about the topic—Cinemalaya probably averages one film about the evils of being Too Online a year—it at least brings a level of storytelling panache that weaves together its thematic preoccupations and its stylistic choices in a memorable way, even as it teeters into gimmick by the end of it.
After accidentally becoming a social media star via a viral taxicab breakdown, vapid influencer Gemma Stone (Ashley Ortega) finds her clout on the wane, but after a drunken encounter with aspiring musician James (Khalil Ramos) in which she convinces him to punch an erstwhile influencer boyfriend on camera, they begin a relationship whose lack of clarity provides the plot with its primary juice, ratcheting up the inherent tension of a boilerplate will-they-won’t-they by casting doubt on whether they ever were.
The film hinges on Ortega and Ramos, who have to calibrate their performances to a very specific tenor between realism and affectation. Their roles are akin to reality TV stars or pro wrestlers cutting a promo, in that the point is to convince the audience something is real without making it too contrived if/when it’s revealed as all being #ForTheGram. Admittedly, they don’t always stick the landing, but both submit admirable turns in very challenging roles.
Ultimately, the approach does deflate the whole thing a little, as any attempt at introducing any genuine humanity or heft to these characters has to be taken with a few pinches of salt by the endgame. The film itself never seems to decide whether or not it wants to fully dive into cynicism—”It’s love” is a refrain occasionally repeated across the film, morphing each time it’s brought out—but it spins this confusion off as intentional ambiguity for as long as it is able. The result is an interesting if scattershot examination of The Way We Are Now that provides plenty of pulpy entertainment that’s never quite as profound as it thinks it is.
Grade: 3.5/5 subscribers
Part III—featuring the remaining four films from this year’s festival—to be released tomorrow.