SQUATTERPUNK (Khavn Dela Cruz)

-

Call it whatever you want- a hybrid of visual narrative and documentary, or an extended punk rock music video. Khavn's SQUATTERPUNK, one of the precursors to his later feature MONDOMANILA, is an undeniable artistic experimentation. 

The electric guitar protrudes onto the screen, highlighting informal settlers' lust for life amidst a backdrop of decay and depravity. Khavn's camera follows youngsters as they play makeshift soccer, sniff rugby, and act all punk. One of the characters even sports a Travis Bickle haircut, and like what the other characters would feel, the audience anticipates the result when such character sits for that said haircut. This is one of the film's plus: it makes the audience a part of the immersion. 

If you're not into genres where dialogue is substituted with visuals, especially where tracking shots are overabundant, then this is not for you. The characters need not say anything. Khavn's camera speaks some unspeakable truths about urban poverty. 

At times, the film feels dragging. The music really uplifts that feeling.

Throughout the movie there are popular Filipino sayings, placed in title cards as means of guidance to the immediately preceding scenes. The first one at the beginning is a guide for the whole film.

SQUATTERPUNK's message is simple, and yet it does not lose Khavn's flair for direct but artful use of satire. In one particular scene, the youngsters altogether take a dump on a mountain of garabage. This could be representative of taking a dump on the "system", saying help from the government would be a good idea, but if not well fuck you then, we're gonna live our life anyway.  

RATING: 3/5

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN (Jun Lana, 2015)

-
Image
* English title "Shadow behind the Moon" The best term to describe Jun Lana's latest film would be a cinematic charade- a game of identities, of motives, of suppressed passions, and of uncertainty. Or the film equivalent of a Russian doll, if you will. "Anino sa Likod ng Buwan" only has three characters- husband and wife Nando (Anthony Falcon) and Emma (LJ Reyes) and military man Joel (Luis Alandy). What started as a seemingly routine banter among friends gradually and intensely escalated into an examination of society, where the definition of immorality is blurred during a time of insurgency.  And in fact, the film does discuss the subject of immorality from various paradigms. When does adultery become acceptable, and to whom? Is sexual liberation more heinous than murder? Why is immorality always a double standard? The film plays out the ideas in endless games. Or are they really games at all? Lana could have stopped there, but he didn'
Read more

TUHOG (Jeffrey Jeturian)

-
Image
Film within a film-structured movies are always interesting watch. Not only do they provide a much-needed deconstruction of form and content of cinema itself, but also that much-needed emotional punch a cinephile would surely love.  Like in BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar, 2004), we witness the characters tell the back story via montage, as if we are part of the cast of characters watching an actual movie. The form was successful in evoking pain and regret, and also of empathy. In TUHOG, Jeffrey Jeturian and screenwriter Bing Lao tackles sensational media in the Philippines, especially in cinema. The film opens as a film producer hears a pitch for a possible movie- a story of a grandfather who rapes his own granddaughter.  The director of the film soon after visits the victim of the crime, Floring (Ina Raymundo). Coercing both she and her mother, Perla (Irma Adlawan) to sell them the movie rights to their story, we witness as exploitation cinema unfolds. To think of it, capitalizing on ta
Read more

BIGKIS (Neal Tan, 2014)

-
Image
As an advocacy film, BIGKIS (INTERTWINED) gets its message across. The state of maternal healthcare in the Philippines is downright depressing, with mothers seated on the floor of public hospitals due to shortage of beds, medical equipment and hospital staff. The baby better be gaping through the birth canal before the mother receives serious medical attention.  Such social issue has been featured countless times in local documentaries and even in a feature film (2011's BAHAY BATA), but BIGKIS pushes the envelope further by bridging a connection between mother and child by means of breastfeeding, and in doing so, promoting breastfeeding in the process.  As a drama, the film tends to squeeze too much tragedy from the downtrodden lives of its characters that a lot of the dialogue feels staged for us to feel sorry for their countless miseries. Mariel (LJ Reyes), a teenage mother deals with an unwanted pregnancy and worse, the abandonment of her baby's father (Pancho M
Read more