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Billie & Emma (2018)
A competent queer film
Billie & Emma is a girl-meets-girl high school romance comedy that could have been better.
The opening scene introduces us to Billie (Zar Danton) standing near a rural waiting shed. Restless and displaced, she lights a cigarette and discards it after a few puffs. A Manileña, she just arrived in the green and airy town of San Isidro. She would continue the rest of her high school education at St. Gerard, an all-girls religious school in the said town after her father found out she was a lesbian. In school, she meets Emma (charming performance from Gabby Padilla), a bright-eyed star student, who notices Billie for her defiant attitude, manly stance, and her odd choice to wear combat boots in school.
Writer and director Samantha Lee surely has a lot of things to say on homosexuality, its effect on relationships, pre-marital sex, teenage pregnancy, and abortion. But unfortunately most of her musings remained only in dialogue, not realized on screen.
Consider this God's Not Dead-like scenario where Billie's religion teacher, also her aunt, Miss Castro (Cielo Aquino) highlights homosexuality as a sin, pulling a verse from the Bible. Of course, Billie debated her in victory. But this moment came across as abrupt and forced, and so did the 'egg funeral' scene knocked off from 3 Idiots when Rancho confronted Virus. While it did build Castro's character, the scene, along with her reading of Rubyfruit Jungle, did little to establish her change of heart and quick confession later on. Characters also speak in a mix of English and Filipino, and it contributed to the film's preachy tone.
This is not to say the film does not have its moments. Emma's unfettered and modish mother (Beauty Gonzales) is entertaining and she provides some of the best scenes. One scene, surprised me when Emma confessed her pregnancy to her mother. Beauty's character reacted casually, contrary to audience expectations which earned laughs. Also the scene when Emma publicly announced her pregnancy in the middle of a flag ceremony, and later drew support from her classmates to protest "Save the baby!" is hilarious.
Subtle symbolisms were also present. Emma and her mother calmly talking about abortion while working on clothes hangers was unsettling and strong. One of the two long takes I spotted was interesting: same-sex lovers romancing in the foreground with a blurry church in the background; the other was plainly ineffective and unnecessary, just to set them up for a kiss. The 90s high school setting was almost effective but not fully harnessed, a watered-down ABNKKBSNPLAko?! vibe.
It's evident the film is pro-choice. Characters make bold decisions and thinks little about traditions, norms, and morals, which I respect. It's just that I felt it juggled too many of its underexecuted themes. It struggled to simultaneously appeal and give lessons to the audience. But an audience? Yes, it has.
Original review first published on Atenews (06/29/2019)
Baden Baden (2016)
Failed Dramedy
"Baden Baden" follows the story of Ana (Salomé Richard) in her mid-20s figuring out life. She looks like Dakota Johnson in a pixie cut. Ana gets yelled at by her boss, sings and literally drives her frustration away and shortly after, gets ticketed. She makes new friends, rekindles past romance, and meets potential lovers. She also bonds with her parents, occasionally.
In what could be considered the film's conflict, Ana's softspoken and witty grandmother (Claude Gensac) was kept for hospital treatment after she slipped in the bathroom. Remaking her toilet, she seeks help from Grégoire (Lazare Gousseau), an awkward store assistant who has a crush on her. In a humorous scene, they both grunt and hump and yank the bathtub out of the tiles the camera made them look like they're clumsily copulating.
"Funny parts were funny, boring parts were boring" was my off-the-cuff reply when a colleague asked my thoughts about it, to the her laughter. But I stand by what I said. With a good soundtrack, this dramedy film has moments of hilarity and hints of realism but unluckily overshadowed by bland and dull sequences.
Dramatic bits, involving family conversations, hinted somber themes. Like light seedheads moving through the blows of the wind, Ana navigates her pathless journey through people she meets.
As a whole, however, it looks like a failed attempt on the slice of life genre. Its lack of structure and ambiguous dreams scenes worked against it. Life's tediousness instead of innocent mundanity was unintentionally mirrored.
The dream-like imagery involves Ana wandering in the misty woods naked, perhaps reflecting how she is free and lost in the wilderness. But it's insertion was ambitious enough it felt shoehorned and detached from the groundedness of the film.
It could be that I just didn't get it, as the guy who enjoyed only the amusing parts. But if that's true I'm not the one to blame for I tried my best to get it--and I tried hard--and in experiencing films of this kind, one should not.
Original unrevised review first appeared on Atenews (08/03/2019)
The Mall, the Merrier! (2019)
A Cringefest!
In my theatre I swear I heard labored laughs behind me. People convincing themselves they're watching something funny, that for a couple of hours their problems in life were pushed aside (and didn't worsen), and that they got their money's worth. I felt very sorry for them.
If laughter's the best medicine, The Mall, The Merrier's filmmakers are albularyos (quack docs).
What happened to Vice Ganda? If my childhood TV memory's right (I hope it is), his movie characters used to be hilarious (Petrang Kabayo), funny (Praybeyt Benjamin), and chuckle-worthy (Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy). But now his flicks barely draw laughter, and when it does, appallingly it is the wrong kind.
Barry Gonzales' (Fantastica) second Vice Ganda flick sucks. It's so bad I promise you it's the worst of the year. It would only lose to Coco Martin's entry in the 'best movie title' category if there's one (we all know the title 3Pol Trobol: Huli Ka Balbon is a stroke of genius).
Directed by Gonzales, written by Alpha Habon, Jonathan Albano, Daisy Cayanan, though obviously machinated by Vice, the flick is set in "Tamol Mall" (pun for tamulmol, slang for stupid, idiot, like the film's slapstick characters), the place where estranged siblings Moira (Vice) and Morissette (Anne Curtis) would compete for its ownership after their parents (Jameson Blake, Elisse Joson) passed. The story would have ended quickly if not because of their family attorney, who left at home the last page of the last will and testament. (Laugh track).
What is this bin of a flick littered with? Facebook/Twitter pick-up lines "nalowbat first sight ako sa'yo"; gays drooling over macho men; girls posing in their bikinis; Lapu-Lapu caricatured to an IP; kitschy fashion match; an excruciating rap battle (I covered my eyes); an uninspired Night at the Museum parody; and most of all, distracting subtitles that didn't match: not as a joke, the names and terms for Filipino pop culture references and punchlines were changed to American ones. What were they thinking? Foreign audiences would care?
Apart from the Victim!-ed moviegoers, I felt terrible for the actors. In the shots of Vice frolicking, in the background you'd notice them smile with discomfort. Lines you'd detect were delivered with a cringe deep inside in every minute their faces are on screen. The adjective 'lucky' are for those who wore mascots with their faces hidden from the camera, and oh to those voice actors. You'd cringe along with them - it's a cringefest.
This flick's a waste of beauty (Curtis, Joson), talent (Dimples Romana, here predictably parodying her Kadenang Ginto character), production and CGI; time - the actors', filmmakers', and moviegoers' (a 2-hour flick we know would air in ABS-CBN months from now), electricity and breathable air. The forced sibling moral lesson at the end is the rotten cherry on top!
I called it a flick - not a 'film' nor a 'movie' - appropriate as malls should have flicked it out of theatres since day one. Even Marius Talampas' Ang Pangarap Kong Holdap, a comedy heist I saw four months ago wasn't composed of famous cast and lavish production elements and yet, it was worth ten times more than Gonzales' (or Vice's) flick.
This is everything that's wrong with the Philippines' film industry and pop culture. Unfunny, cringe-worthy, ignorant, and disgusting, The Mall, The Merrier is an insult to comedy and to the other genres (family musical) it purports to be.
As I bolted out of the theatre, the bloopers rolled, as if the entire thing I sat through wasn't one.
Original unrevised review first appeared on Atenews (01/02/2020)