SUBTITLES & SUBTLETIES

Pipilotti Rist, Ever is Over All (1997)

Or Daddy Issues for Birds.

Disclosure: Hinagunoy sa Goryon (Chirps of the Tree Sparrow) is an animated thesis short film of a friend. We are both BFA Cinema majors from the University of San Carlos, Cebu, Philippines. I’m part of the team who organized the 2016 Carolinian Annual Film Exhibit, where 10 other works by the Seniors were also screened. This is not a sponsored post because students are stingy and I am not an important enough “blogger” to be paid (ha).

By the time this will be published, the 4.5k likes and 4, 685 shares Hinagunoy sa Goryon already has on Facebook would have been added to. I’d call it a sleeper hit if you let me, except only a small percentage of all the people it’s touched online have seen it (if they will at all, since the director plans to submit it to festivals). I wish it could have a wide release, too.

Hinagunoy sa Goryon is a fable about the act of leaving and the way it affects those left behind.

Loss comes in many ways--estranged fathers, ex-lovers, dead friends.

Hinagunoy sa Goryon in its insufferable cuteness made the pains of separation feel all too real.

A tree sparrow approaching its midlife crisis reflecting on mortality? How’s that for a cartoon?

Even the audio glitch that muted the background score in some scenes during the screening was a kind of poetry, a happy accident. Sometimes musical cues that tell you how to feel are cheap. Sometimes silence just fits.

Of course everyone’s gotta be a critic, including myself. The comment section of the viral trailer ranged from the usual/expected/rightful spazzing to presumptuous commentary from armchair analyst types. That the audio and rough movements of the human characters in Goryon need improvement, alright reasonable judgments. But one that stuck out the most was the word, “rip-off”.

The Makoto Shinkai influence is obvious and very much owned up to by the creator. Ever noticed that hilarious Easter egg practice in anime of butchering actual brand logos to escape copyright infringement claims? It’s here! (SkyFlakes >> ShyCakes).

It’s interesting when the fixtures of one’s childhood summers spent at the province are given the Japanese treatment a la Goryon, our santan to their sakura, if you will. Onscreen, even the local and familiar could look exotic and fresh.

Another good film in the festival lineup was Lyka Ruela’s A-Z, which was pretty much millennial Cebu Lost in Translation from the atmospheric bokeh porn right down to the whispering at the end. It makes me wonder at what point in being derivative do we cross the line, or are we okay with certain homages more than others?

Cinema came to be thanks to the white guy, and the technology improved only because Europeans and Americans kept stealing from each other. There’s absolutely nothing indigenous to us about it except our stories. I’m writing this right now on a laptop made in China as a Filipino with a Polish name.

The visuals of Hinagunoy sa Goryon is what reels you in at a first glance. Beyond the hype though, It’s the heart and soul of this film that matters in the end. And if it made my stoic stone self tear up, trust me when I tell you it is beautiful inside and out.

The eyes have it.

Their irises are a vision, as is the rest of Laurence Anyways.

In cinema, it's all about breaking every dating pro-tip: Do fall in love at first sight and please judge the book by its cover. See, if I wanted something that was only just plot-biased, I'd read a novel instead. 

When Laurence was asked if looks mattered to her, she replied:

Whether awash in the 80s neon color palette lovechild of Enter the Void and Spring Breakers,

Or a soft pastel look a la Sofia Coppola,

The cinematography is as on-point as its soundtrack, production design and  acting.

Monia Chokri, you have more dry-wit deadpan game than all of the Zooey Deschanels and Aubrey Plazas in the world combined. 

Nathalie Baye was bittersweet in her turn as Laurence's ice queen of a mother. Who marries a man to be his midwife?

Blue is the Warmest Color was overrated. Sorry, no amount of hot lesbians can take away from the true winner of the Best Three Hour Account of a Doomed, Deemed Unconventional Relationship.

Not only is Laurence Anyways quote unquote a gay film, but it makes us realize how hard it can get when you fight for the birthright to be different.

I like how these movies as of late have artists (or the H word) as main characters, so that in a fit of philosophizing it feels more organic, should the names of Great White Dead Literary Men come up in the dialogue.

For example, in the new Filipino release That Thing Called Tadhana, Anthony (played by JM de Guzman) quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald, "There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice." Then again he's a Fine Arts graduate from the state university. There was even a cute self-aware burgis joke somewhere. It's not a case of screenwriter pushing for insta-deep cultural clout by way of name-dropping. What this thing may reflect though is that artists project unto their art what they draw from their own artful lives. Sit in an independent cafe and eavesdrop on neighboring conversations--you'll hear verbal snippets that were seemingly lifted off sitcoms, a wit pandemic of Internet-speak lexicon.  

I guess whether life-imitates-art or art-imitates-life is a chicken and egg question: Nobody's first, we're unoriginal, self-absorbed plagiarists either way, and having cinematic pretensions for life goals is okay!

Laurence the professor poet and Fred the film chick are the kind of lovers I dream of one day being one half of.

Scrawling French poetry on my boyfriend's back, you know, usual couple stuff.

Well, except the part where he wakes up on me to say he's been living a lie.

Because all this time, he's always felt like a woman on the inside.

So Laurence is gay.

Except Laurence isn't.

Because he still loves her.

And she does too.

The death of a relationship can come in the form of "Oh hey, I wear your underwear when you're away."

Sometimes though, it can be in revelations less cataclysmic and more ordinary. Love does die of its own old age.

We will all one day have to settle like how dust in a locked room collects in a corner and dances in the sunlight when we touch it. It stops moving when we leave, flying off to another surface to become its dust.

There is the kind of settling that involves girlfriends as doormats and rebounds and void-fillers-for-the-one-great-love-affair-that-was.

And then there's the settlement of marriage, and the white house, son and boredom that comes with it.

I was backlogging Humans of New York when I came across a photo of a divorcee say that not everything successful has to be permanent (or something to that effect).

Here lies my heart, home to self-starting vehicular accidents.

I lay horizontal on the backseat of the car. There's a light show on the ceiling from the moving traffic. My father or a friend or a taxi driver tries to will the rusting bits and pieces to life while I wait, light dead weight. 

Love is a false start like that. Cleaning mud off the rims and airing it out to dry in noon-time heat. I buckle myself up schoolgirl-tight. And for what? Engine malfunction, surplus secondhand Kia locomotion. License expired when, fuck, I don't even know how to drive.

His name shall be Bacon. Not after food, or the actor. An inside joke, rather, at least according to me. If he still remembers. I wrote bad poetry in his honor once. A line went along the lines of wanting him to throw his love out to me by the bucketful, the day I stood by his window when he only dripped and sprinkled. That's about as verbatim as my memory allows. Good God, thankfully I didn't send it to that writing contest in the black plague dark days of heartbreak. Bacon would've never let me live it down, as he would if he reads this and recognizes himself.

Six months spent sad for a three week-old relationship. This was Fur. Fur's a fucking weirdo, but he was one of the firsts. With him I took the introductory trial run of working boyfriend setups: the domesticity of preparing packed lunches in school and notoriety of people seeing us share aforementioned packed lunches. We ran on a currency of electricity. It was Youtube links for goodnight kisses. He dumped me online, too. We live ten kilometers away from each other.

For a while I found myself a nice Chinese pre-med student who shares my surname, which meant he must have been loyal by virtue of us already pretty much married to each other. Except Lim wasn't a Biology major, I just said that to heighten the Chineseness.It ended because I refused to be as nicely packaged as dimsum takeout. He would've never taken me home. I don't like using chopsticks. (Is self-racism a thing?)

If only I fell less for ideas. I slurped the myth of the older man like hot soup on a sick day. Yet no amount of Incognito tabs upon tabs of Professor Fucks Hot Young Teen videos could ever have prepared me: Vlad, about ten years my senior. They say that's fine wine aged enough. I've found I'm not really a connoisseur though, thanks. I'm okay with my guys like grape juice.

Today is Knight, and it's the baddest hair day in my altogether bad hair life. I walked home after I found out that I've been replaced almost immediately after we stood together in between classes while I leeched off his bitter-ass black iced coffee. I do that all the time--use him, milk the last of his unlit cigarettes mine. Never did it hit me that I too could be used just as easily. Knight came on a black stallion at an after-party. I was drunk on spiked pineapple punch. Then, he kind of became a hangover that never went away.

We have a scratchy old WELCOME mat at home, and two brother-sister alley-cats. The male's gotten his sister pregnant again. Born together, for each other. The kittens would never live--they'd get run over or thrown out. The ones that do bear a scarlet letter by way of inborn blindness. It's so romantic, except it's so incestuous. I linger on our doorstep, reinforcing my status as the weird neighbor to the gossips next door. "Look at her talk to the animals again, hun."

I wish I wasn't too sincere for my own good. That's why people think I'm quiet, because I refuse to fill dead air with even deader chatter. You know what words don't deserve to be birthed in that room where we once loved? Small talk about the weather.

When all the prospects flushed themselves down the drain, the world was no co-conspirator. It neither causes nor condone anything, whatever forces this universe is governed by. I deserved rain. The sky ought to have cried on my behalf, because my own tear ducts are under-used to the point of not being functional anymore. What do I get instead? A cartoonish shade of crayon bright blue overhead. The road to my room where I would then hole up in is dotted with dog shit like landmines. The sun's a show-off when it shines too much. We the sentimentally-predisposed curate soundtracks to scenes that will never play at the right time, because that is how real life is. Maybe that's why I'm a film student. 

Thus, this: No Bacon, Fur, Lim, Vlad, or Knight, just this laptop's glare at 3 AM in my unlit bedroom. Unerased text messages from all the guys that ever were. A mental registry of all the things I thought would get the damn car to start--hands held in the dark/semi-public us-against-the-world locked lips/tongue gymnastics/movie dates. 

Wedding Song (Acoustic Verison) From the New Yeah Yeah Yeahs album Mosquito (Deluxe Edition)

I'm actually wriggling waist-deep in school work right now, but for you and I in this day and (Internet) age of short attention spans, we will always have five minutes to spare for a movie, yes? 

Unlike my previous FMFRs, this is a personal all-time favorite of mine that I've seen seven or so times.

Little Miss Sunshine laughs at the things we're not supposed to.

All while also giving hope to things that we're not supposed to still feel hopeful for. 

As far as dysfunctional families go, the Hoovers are pretty endearing.

There's Richard, the pushy dad who's trying to publish his own self-help book despite, well, needing help himself...

Sheryl, the stressed out housewife.

Edwin, the sorta pervy grandpa with a drug habit.

Dwayne, the morose-as-only-teenagers-can-be Nietzsche fanboy who's on a self-imposed vow of silence. 

Frank, the clinically depressed, intellectual homosexual uncle.

And Olive, a wannabe beauty queen.

Oh, and the family Volkswagen Microbus that kept dying on them on the road from Albuquerque to California.

As seen in the classic car-pushing scenes. 

I think seeing Little Miss Sunshine so young really helped my perception of what an indie movie could be. Others are reared into the movement with a nearly silent, subtitled art piece that lasts three hours. An introduction into independent with the cinematic equivalent to Depresso coffee could repel any desire to expand one's viewing taste whatsoever, forever.  

Little Miss Sunshine is no chore-bore. Sure, it doesn't have CGI explosions or much in the way of romance; but isn't it about time the film experience (mine & yours) went beyond escapist entertainment?

The world's infested us all with the idea that we're in a big fat rat-race. Which we probably are in, but by our own doing, beating ourselves up for not fitting into the everyone else's definition of success.

When really, it's about defining your own happiness. And not denying yourself the right to be yourself.

... Okay, I realize I am starting to sound as corny as Richard Hoover's 9-Step Refuse to Lose program, which Little Miss Sunshine definitely isn't, what with its main selling point being the black humor.

Because what feel-good flick features the transport of a dead body in the trunk of a car across state lines?

Or the casual mention of not just one literary heavyweight, but two (Mr. Friedrich of "God-Is-Dead" fame and a certain Marcel Proust)?

Stuff like Miss Universe already make me wince, but child beauty contests put me on a whole different epileptic cringe level.

From Honey Boo Boo types to the stage moms/creepy emcee/judges/adults who are way too into it for their age...

*shudders*

With suspect solitary members of the audience like this guy who may or may not have been a pedophile... 

Or a single dad! GOD Y U SO JUDGMENTAL?!

I'm going to have to pull a Kanye here: Imma let you finish, but Little Miss Sunshine had one of the best movie endings of all time. (Hint: Dancing to the song Superfreak by Rick James)

Glorify losers Little Miss Sunshine does not. 

A snide ode to the overrated-ness of perfection it is. 

Ultimately, family's family, no matter how flawed. 

My eyes are dry. 

Not because I wiped the tears away.

It's just that I've been staring at this computer for too long. 

Life's anticlimactic like that. I need eye drops, and the will to live offline sometime, so I could actually know what it's like to dry your eyes after crying from something real. 

Artist: M83 Album: Saturdays = Youth Song: Too Late "I look into your eyes Diving into the ocean I look into your eyes Falling Like a wall of stars We are ripe to fall...

I dream of the day when I would never be crippled by the obligation to be best friends with everybody.

Oh, wait a minute, I'm wide awake. 

In this blog's brief history, I've always maintained that I like my movies the way I want people to be. That is, to keep it real. And really, what else is closest to reality than a documentary?

Today's "reality" shows seem suspect to offscreen engineering all in the name of better ratings. I never for a second believed that to be at work in Grey Gardens though. The cameras didn't exist, only my eyes. 

Grey Gardens is the mansion that used to be, housing the decayed dreams of its just-as-washed-up inhabitants, mother and daughter Edith Beale. 

I reckon the reason Grey Gardens is more voyeuristic than, say, a Kardashian show is because we see its stars even in (un)flattery. Little Edie and Big Edie's moments aren't played up for the lolz or sympathy, they're just shown as they are.

But of course, human nature errs off course from soulless, robotic objectivity. And we feel for them, naturally. 

Grey Gardens makes you wonder what your own neighborhood cat lady's life must have been like. For all we know, we're living among fallen social butterflies.

My sighs were bittersweetest for Little Edie. Hers was truly the robbed life. I would never have it in me to just set aside all my personal ambitions because my mom asked me to stay with her.

I understood where her nagging was coming from--I wasn't quick to dismiss it as a Western lack of filial piety, a lack that relegates grandparents to wait for their deaths at nursing homes. 

Because she loved her mother, truly did. 

As much as Little Edie longed to recapture her big break, she was just as afraid of the even bigger world beyond Grey Gardens. 

Home is where the heart is; home holds you back; home is the past and home is when mothers and daughters randomly burst into a nervous breakdown/off-key song number/fight, then forget everything the next day.

Were the Edies nuts? Or had what they shown been merely the eccentricities of staunch characters like themselves...?

Big Edie's 79th birthday party didn't go so bad after all!

If I had a time machine I would like to pay the women a visit and bond over fashion, ice cream, and cats. Little Edie could teach me how to swim and Big Edie would play me records and sing over them. 

Grey Gardens: keeping it realest since 1975.  

I just saw The Fault in Our Stars today. It was okay (? Okay.) as I didn't eye-roll or scoff at every pretentious moment as much as I thought I would.

But you've seen that movie, or else you are about to, and The Five Minute Film Review has never been about shedding light on something that's already so bright. I write for the overlooked and obscure because I am one hipster fuck. For today in movies you might have missed, I present to you Heathers. 

Unlike the realness of Turn Me On Dammit (see previous FMFR), Heathers considerably has more artifice. Unlike TFIOS, however, you don't even really mind how unlike actual teenagers the characters in Heathers are. 

You forgive what's fake in Heathers because a.) It's a movie b.) It's a very good movie and c.) It just might be the best teen movie ever!

Heathers is a satirical teen comedy in the same vein as Mean Girls, except it came first. As if thematic connections aren't enough, Heathers' screenwriter and Mean Girls' director are brothers. 

There's a queen bee,

The one who wants to dethrone her,

The airhead.

They all go by the name of Heather, forming 3/4 of Heathers, Westerburg High's ruling class.

Then there's the outsider they let in, Veronica. Winona Ryder just shines onscreen with her quasi-Audrey Hepburn oil painting beauty as the new kid on the clique.

Seriously, hers is a face that can never fail, not even when smeared with shit that's supposed to make her look ugly.

JD is the charismatic-psychopathic love interest, played by Christian Slater who kind of looks like a woman.

Their relationship is us-against-the-world cute in that crazy, dysfunctional way.

With all the dead teenagers in Heathers, it bears a touch of The Virgin Suicides, too.

Bearing the distinction of being several touches even darker because Heathers has murder (orchestrated to look like suicides by JD and Veronica).

If you've ever felt guilty for laughing at cancer jokes, Heathers is one black humor guilt trip after another. 

Bullies are the eternal offspring of high school, in turn giving birth to video game-inspired shooting rampages. Heathers clutches by the throat all that is extreme in these trying, treacherous times.

Adolescents can be monsters, and Heathers neither scrimps nor sugarcoats on that sentiment.

With adults apparently making it their second job to misunderstand us.

If you emerge from it relatively unscathed without a record of homicide...

Congratulations! You survived the best--or worst--years of your life and soon it'll be your turn to take over the adults and misunderstand teens yourself! 

But before I go, I'm sure you know at least one #yoloswag douche with a (counterfeit?) Supreme shirt or Obey snapback.

Did you know these brands owe a now 69-year-old conceptual artist for their look?

In Heathers, Barbara Kruger's work makes a special guest appearance inside a locker.

I've a love-hate relationship with teenagers in fiction. They, or rather we--though I'll be 20 in a month--put up with portrayals of ourselves drawn up from romanticized, rose-colored sunglasses. 

When really, nobody I know is naturally John Green-precocious or Heathers-witty (separate entry on that movie soon). 

Few get the essence of my age bracket right, but every time anybody ever does, the results are often pitch-perfect. Turn Me On, Dammit! is one such example.

Alma is an otherwise normal girl growing up in a dead-beat little Norwegian town. 

Except her hormones may just be a bit more extraordinary than everyone else's...

As in "phone-sex-service-number-on-speed-dial" horny.

Maybe it's not only about the intensity of Alma's urges, though, or its frequency. Maybe it's just as much about her honesty. 

Double standards abound, and female sexuality onscreen can be pretty one-note. You'd be a whore when guys are rewarded with the title of "stud" for the same kind of bed behavior. 

It isn't even like Alma's boning every single boy in school, what's at work is really more a kinkiness in theory on her part--until that one party when...

... Which actually happened in real life and not just in her fantasies. What Alma didn't foresee was her own friend Ingrid turning against her.

Why? Because she likes Artur too.

Ingrid proceeds to brainwash all their classmates into believing Alma was lying about Artur *literally* hitting on her. 

Thus, the birth of Dick-Alma.

It doesn't help that Artur chickens out from his own dick-poking despite genuinely liking her. Alma weathers the storm of petty social intrigue all by her lonesome.

Add to that a mom who overshares about her daughter's business like it's everyone else's.

Losing her friends. 

Yeah I'm with you on that, Alma. 

High school can house a herd of sheep people.

But there's bound to be an individual somewhere, like Saralou in the film. Alma's best friend, Saralou is also Ingrid's sister, and she delivered my favorite scene-stealing lines.  

Saralou would like to live to see the day capital punishment in Texas is abolished. Meanwhile, she drafts letters to send to inmates on death row. 

Saralou dates the surprisingly romantic resident stoner in class, Kjartan.

On top of that, she looks and sounds just like Ellen Page as Juno.

I think what I appreciate the most in Turn Me On, Dammit! is that it admits everything adolescence is all about.

Awkwardness.

Scrutiny.

Judgment.

Drinking on the night shift of your part-time job?

Discontent.

The elusive quest to be cool (hitchhiking all the way to Oslo as Alma did and partying with your best friend's older sister and her college roommates qualifies).

The need to be validated by others.

Space.

And somewhere along that soup of kid-adult dichotomy, maybe even love. 

If you've always second-guessed the possibility that cinematic brilliance could be found in the animated form, allow those doubts to die with Perfect Blue.

It's categorized rightly so as a psychological thriller, what with the schizophrenic sequences and the blurs between reality and dreams.

This isn't just a movie for the crazies though. Perfect Blue takes a turn towards even more intense depth, to the less obvious route of being sociological, damning a society that puts the cult in celebrity culture by treating the people at its forefront as commodities.

Mima is one-third of an upstart Jpop group called CHAM, or at least she used to be. For all their bubblegum girl band twee-kawaii, their fanbase is overwhelmingly male.

This Mima fanboy in particular happens to be overwhelmingly creepy, a stalker with a savior complex bent on destroying the sell-out Mima to bring back her old self. 

Mima's mistake? Giving up on her singing career to get into acting. 

While her manager Tadokoro insists on blind optimism, her other more maternal manager Rumi (a washed-up former pop idol herself) disapproves of the kind of choices Mima is forced to make all in the name of succeeding in show business, one of which is playing a rape victim.

I challenge you to not wince once as you sit through it. Even when animated, to see it is as if to suffer yourself.

There's only so much one can take before caving in and cracking under pressure. 

When blow after soul-crushing blow finally does take its toll on Mima, I felt my own head go trippy too.  

Fame has a way of ensuring your personal troubles never stay private for long. If the whole world became my therapist, I think I'd turn myself in at an insane asylum.

The ending will rock you to the core and you'll probably go to bed after Perfect Blue is finished with a brand-new conviction to trust no one. Not even yourself.

Which leads me to this observation on the past few Asian films I've seen--it seemingly ain't complete without a plot twist! 

On a side note--because irreverence is as second-nature to me as Mima's desire is to please everybody--is that a Kewpie doll? I love Japanese mayonnaise!

My Emptiness by Ciudad