Mixed Media : Stray Cats in the Neighborhood
Sylvia L. Mayuga
Inquirer News Service
No excuses. I missed the opening of a new chapter of Filipino soul history at the CCP's Cinemalaya festival of independent films a month ago. More faithful cineastes may find the reason lame – a choice between closely following and relaying the unfolding of Gloriagate to a global nation OR "playing hooky" in movies of my heart.
A sense of duty won that round, but the heart would not be denied. No sooner was the opening of Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil's "Mga Pusang Gala" (The Stray Cats) in commercial theaters announced last weekend than I was dragging an expat media buddy to Robinson's Ermita. The movie was not part of Cinemalaya, but its opening at the gay Pink Festival the month before, with glowing reviews spilling into July, gave a factually erroneous yet accurate impression: "Mga Pusang Gala" is part of this new chapter of Filipino film history – more interesting, on its own terms.
It's two hours of toothsome viewing – impeccable set design, fluid blocking, first-rate lead acting, delicious music, tight editing. Together they briskly deliver a story of two foolish loves – of a sweet and sentimental gay pulp fiction writer (Ricky Davao) for his blue-collar male lover, and his sparring partner, a fast-talking advertising gal (Irma Adlawan), for her hide-and-seek executive, a lover addicted to dark suits and averse to commitment. Between them is a progress report of the evolving Filipino idea of family, a worthy frontier for artistic exploration in Catolico cerrado country.
These two main characters in an adaptation of the Palanca-awarded play 'Mga Estranghero at ang Gabi' (Strangers and the Night) by Jun Lana come perilously close to two-dimensional protagonists in the shadow of Beverley Hills. But the treatment – sympathetic, understated and blessed by humorous grace notes, again, so Pinoy – avoids the pitfalls. There was a tiny fly in the ointment in the climax, as stage actress Adlawan becomes a tad too theatrical and the camera slightly overactive. Excusable, when the stud who made you pregnant won't marry or even say he'll help raise the child, but it does mark room for future improvement in the realm of understatement, say รก la Ishmael Bernal.
Overall, Pusang Gala is a well-told tale locking a full Nelson on lingering notions that local commercial film and a whole lot of imported Hollywood have anything over indie, but for the inertia of rest in a boring, wasteful system. Viva, Regal, Seiko et al have their supermarket-like formula plots, marketing and distribution systems in place; indie originals must work their butts off to reach a general audience. But with quality, leveling the playing field is only a matter of time. Foreigners usually see this first in their film festivals where so many Filipino films, mostly indie, have won prizes. Pusang Gala is one such film, bringing the sparkle of surprise, the intimate feel, the rush of insight and a sense of new life opening in the dark of a movie house. Catch it while you can.
Buoyed by a sense of history in the making, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros" (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) was next. Its young lead actor Nathan Lopez won a special Jury Prize, its set designer Lily Esquillon Best Production Design at Cinemalaya. Here began further discovery of digital filmmaking as a brave new world in form, substance and culture.
Where and when else than in Manila, right now, can one scoot off to see a prizewinning film's producer – Raymond Lee, himself a first-rate screenwriter (Anak, Tanging Yaman, Kailangan Kita) – to pick up CDs of a film at the eve of departure for the Montreal Film Festival with him and its director Auraeus Solito? No, it wasn't the power of the press, just plain logistics – with respective deadlines breathing down both our necks, and the fact that Pagdadalaga and the rest of Cinemalaya's festival winners are still negotiating for commercial theater showing a month after their triumphant media splash. We'll get to that story behind the story, but first let me repeat what earlier reviews of other Cinemalaya films have already recognized.
Pagdadalaga is a great film, if "great" means art that brings you closer to your core and provokes awe and gratitude. Why? Well, there's its light-handed take on Manila's slums, whose objective misery has the UNDP, IMF and World Bank throwing up their hands. Pinoy wonder of wonders, amid the garbage, potholes, stinking drainage, clogged esteros, drug abuse, too many children and catch-as-catch-can livelihood is unfailing, idiosyncratic good grace – a deeply philosophical nature barely conscious of itself, much less able to spell the word. This nature shines through in Pagdadalaga the way it has eluded many a polemical conscience film. That's by no means saying that our slums now qualify as paradise. What it's saying is that art alighting on Maxi's world compels identification with this pubescent 12-year old gay's grace and innocence in a dark, brusquely loving home in the slums. He's content with being "lady of the house" – cooking, cleaning and mending for his widowed father and two brothers who make their living as cell phone snatchers. But they accept his gender with gentle, tolerant affection. Maxi spends his leisure on DVD films and gay fashion shows with the neighborhood sisterhood – until the day Patrolman Victor Perez (JR Valentin) arrives in his life. When this handsome 24-year old rookie rescues Maxi from neighborhood toughies, beating him up for the fun of it, the inevitable happens – first gay love, unrequited and every bit as lyrical as Romeo and Juliet waxing poetic around her balcony.
The straight Patrolman Perez proceeds to do his duty in the warren of petty criminals that is Maxi's world and the key of tragedy begins to strum an inexorable end. Indeed, killing and dying happen – yet, to the film's credit, the end surprises. I won't ruin your future enjoyment by spelling it out, but no doubt about it – indie is another word for aerating the stagnant backwaters of lazy filmmaking by formula.
Now a word about the lighting because it says a lot about production culture in indie country -- the uncorrected CD version I saw on my PC had several scenes too dark to see and I had only voices to tell me what was happening. "Did you use natural light all throughout?" I asked cinematographer and master graphic artist Nap Jamir, who just added Maximo Oliveros to his lengthening filmography with the local best, among them Tikoy Aguiluz.
"No, we used redheads of 650 watts, those lamps you use for docus," he said, adding, "This is indie. We had to be economical. But our Panasonic 24 P camera is light sensitive, so we shot most of it with incandescent bulbs and used the redheads only to bounce off light."
"Impressive," I said. "Mike de Leon told me once that lighting a set is like painting. No wonder the look is so consistent," I said.
"Yes, and now the new print with light and color corrected has a very unified kind of look," Nap said gleefully. "The external scenes are uniformly warm, the internal uniformly cold. Eighty percent of that movie was shot indoors."
"What about the crowd? It looked almost like a documentary -- so casual and natural, seemingly undirected, everyone doing their neighborhood thing like there was no camera – quarreling about garbage disposal, bathing in the open, flirting in mini-skirts," I said.
"We shot in Auraeus's Sampaloc neighborhood where he's done with earlier documentaries. This is first feature. He's lived there for 30 years. His mother is barangay captain. They're used to him. He doesn't attract any attention with his cameras anymore. There was no need for crowd control," said Nap.
"You've worked with commercial films Nap," I pursued. "What would you say is the difference between that experience and this?"
"Well," he said, "this was a very comfortable filmmaking milieu, more intimate, more intense. You feel really part of it. And the scriptwriter (Michiko Yamamoto) was there for the shooting, so we always got the feel of the script's intentions."
"Parang siya ang(It's like she's the) auteur," I said.
"Si Auraeus, pero madaling mag-usap-usap." (It's Auraeus, but it was easy to discuss things.)
The way of the counter-culture, I thought – wondering how long before, if ever, more of its style would filter down from indie eyries to the commercial world. Pepe Smith's music and cameo appearance in this film alone speak volumes of the endurance and sense of family that makes film work a whole lot easier, especially in Pinoy counter-culture.
"What was the editor like?" I asked. "Oh, the editor was perfect," said Nap of the high standards, chuckling, "Everyone got along so well in this film."
"And Raymond Lee calls himself a 'creative' producer, as opposed, I suppose, to a plain moneybags, fund-raiser or talent coordinator. It feels like we're into a new film era in this country with digital, Nap. You think it's another nouvelle vague, like the 60s abroad and the 70s here?"
"Oh, yes," he chuckled some more, "it's a new generation, with so many talented kids winning prizes in festivals abroad."
And so many new storylines coming closer and closer to the Filipino gut and dream, never explored by the commercial world. Now if only indie marketing and distribution could be worked out with half the creativity, imagination and generosity of this new filmmaking generation – an indie generation, "indi-genes" for short. Like stray cats wandering the neighborhood with new messages, they bring us secrets of sanity.
Click into the Cinemalaya website to see what more of what I mean: