FILM REVIEW: festival freak, astounding art

There is no Art vs. Commerce. Commerce won years ago.

‘Thy Womb’ (Sa ‘Yong Sinapupunan) comes to us already festooned with laurels from the international film festival circuit. It is exactly the type of movie that appeals to foreign film festival programmers: a portrait of marginalized folk in an exotic setting, full of the rituals and traditions of a community little seen in popular culture (Although Lamberto Avellana made a film called ‘Badjao’ in 1957). The question is: Will local audiences go for it?

The old fiction was that filmmakers do not care about the box-office prospects of their movies. This fiction has been erased by the Metro Manila Film Festival, which has made commercial appeal the primary standard for selection. The awards are just another marketing hook: stars pitted against each other for fake prestige. How can we take seriously an awards show that hands out trophies not just for acting, directing and writing, but for best float and best sex appeal? If the MMFF were honest, the box-office results would be the awards.

It’s worth noting that the MMFF selection committee declined ‘Thy Womb’ initially, even if it stars the great Nora Aunor and is directed by Brillante Ma Mendoza, who won the Best Director prize at Cannes a few years ago (before he affixed the ‘Ma’). Its inclusion in the filmfest slate is not due to the awards it has reaped in Italy, Australia and elsewhere, but to the non-completion of the eighth entry.

Thirty years ago the mere mention of Nora Aunor would’ve made it an MMFF shoo-in, even if commercial potential had been the sole criterion. But Nora Aunor’s star has passed into legend, her fans are older, and today’s audience is different. As for Brillante Ma Mendoza, his career highlights the fact that there are two movie industries in the Philippines: the mainstream, which makes movies for the local audience, and the indies, who make movies for the foreign festival audiences.

Which is not to imply that in previous decades audiences flocked to “critically-acclaimed” films. Many of the Brocka and Bernal movies that are now considered classics were financial flops. However, directors had more freedom in the 70s and 80s—ironic when you consider that it was the martial law era. They were allowed to alternate commercial movies with personal projects: for every ‘Pasan Ko Ang Daigdig’, Brocka could do an ‘Insiang’; for each ‘Galawgaw’, Bernal could do a ‘Manila By Night’. The exception is Mike De Leon, who can do whatever he wants, which, based on his recent output, is nothing. At the present time the one-for-you, one-for-me system does not exist: you make Cinema, or you make money.

No one expects ‘Thy Womb’ to be one of the filmfest top-grossers. It may be hot stuff in foreign festivals, but in the MMFF it is the freak.

A woman’s worth

In ‘Thy Womb’, Nora Aunor and Bembol Roco play Shaleha and Bangas-an, a Badjao couple in late middle age. They are small fisherfolk in Tawi-Tawi, they make colorful reed mats, and she is also a midwife. A barren midwife—we’ll ignore the obviousness (and the fact that the characters speak Tagalog while everyone else speaks Tausug with English subtitles) since the rest of the movie is subtle and so restrained, I thought I was watching a documentary. Their desire for a child is such that Shaleha urges Bangas-an to take a second wife who can bear him one. Muslim law allows it. (The plot recalls the Old Testament story of Sarah and Abraham: the childless Sarah gives Abraham her maid Hagar, who bears him a son, Ishmael. When Sarah herself has a child, she sends Hagar and Ishmael away. According to tradition, Ishmael is the ancestor of Muhammad.) The couple is short on funds for the bride’s dowry, but the money is raised. Shaleha does not seem at all troubled by the idea of sharing her husband.

So for the first 90 minutes, we’re wondering what the conflict is. We see the couple going about their daily routines and making inquiries as to potential wives. The war in Mindanao encroaches on their lives, but it is no more than a casual, almost comical inconvenience. There is an incident that reminds them of mortality and strengthens Shaleha’s resolve to give Bangas-an a child, even if it’s another woman’s. The situation rife with melodramatic possibilities—in the typical Tagalog other-woman scenario, the shrieking and slapping would’ve begun in five minutes. But ‘Thy Womb’ has other plans. It asks us to contemplate a culture in which a woman’s worth is measured by her ability to bear children (and expressed in pesos). Shaleha is loving, devoted and hardworking, but all that matters is Bangas-an’s need to be a father. That’s just the way it is, and Mendoza does not pass judgment. ‘Thy Womb’ is respectful of Islamic and Badjao traditions even as it gently raises questions about the rights of women.

Basically we’re watching two of the finest actors in Philippine cinema not acting, but being ordinary people, indistinguishable from the population. Everyone onscreen is so natural, the camera may well be invisible. The music, though, is generic ethnic; it sounds like the muzak played at the CCP to signal the audience to take their seats. Odyssey Flores’s cinematography is indistinguishable from a travelogue: picturesque, but indifferent to the proceedings. We learn the entire procedure for getting married among the Badjao, but the characters themselves are cyphers, details in a landscape.

‘Thy Womb’ is part of what I call the Armando Lao School of Social Realism (after the screenwriter and writing mentor who authored ‘Serbis’ and ‘Kinatay’): less drama than ethnography, truth unvarnished and presented in all its banal detail. I go to the movies for something larger than life, I get something as small as life. This is a cinema that is not interested in helping me escape my boring existence, but in showing me other lives as real as mine. It does not hold my hand and tell me how to think of what I’m watching: it makes me work. I will only get as much as I’m willing to give the experience, but the reward, if it comes, is an insight that lasts longer than a quick entertainment fix.

It’s just not a barrel of fun.

And then, in the last half-hour, comes the whammy. Shaleha finds someone willing to marry Bangas-an. There’s a humorous moment when a woman is introduced to the couple, but she turns out to be the mother of the bride. Lovi Poe may be too beautiful to play Mersila the second wife—one wonders why she agrees to the union when she could do so much better—but her desirability makes her words even more wrenching. The look that passes between Bangas-an and Shaleha sums up an entire history that is somehow less weighty than the biological imperative.

Shaleha’s decision—quiet, noble, dignified—is the final twist of the knife. She says everything that needs to be said without uttering a word. Her silence hits the ground like thuds. This is Nora Aunor. Words would only cheapen the moment. (JESSICA ZAFRA, InterAksyon.com)