Pitik Bulag (Blind Luck)

Marco Alcaraz

I'll go right ahead and admit that the first ten minutes had me hooked, in which swarthy hunk Marco Alcaraz makes love to Paloma in the open evening air, squeezing her breasts with his athletic hands, then later, desperately auditions for a movie role in front of two gay men, by macho dancing in his white Bench briefs, the brand the actor endorses. Early buzz surrounding the movie focuses on the trivia that Alcaraz has never done a boldie, but a big part of why that even matters is that the TV regular, with his cold snarl, has always looked like something was plugged up his ass (here no exception), even when half-naked, but is now willing to be objectified, or, okay, made vulnerable. As it turns out, it's a red herring of an intro, because Pitik Bulag is no sexy flick in the usual definition, but a crime caper, sort of.

Alcaraz plays a down-on-his-luck ex-stuntman husband who trips on unbelievable luck when a bag of money falls on his lap. Yes, it's that old plot. We already know that money from the sky brings graver misfortune. But Pitik Bulag doesn't tread the path of last year's Imoral -- or, for that matter, Misteryo Sa Tuwa (1984) or A Simple Plan (1998). We'd been trained to expect the scenario leads to a battle of wits among people who are supposed to split the money between them, thereby releasing each one's personal demons. The refreshing surprise of Pitik Bulag is that the heroes allow their good values to drive their decisions. There's a stretch of good deeds, such as caring for the departed or your pet, that double as thrill highlights -- who knew? Maybe the film is saying that doing "the right thing" complicates our lives.

Director Gil Portes, with screenwriter Eric Ramos, who's a factory of potboiler scripts lately (Walang Kawala, Heavenly Touch), have built a kind of purgatory for their characters. Why else are they making it difficult for themselves if they don't believe it will save them? Even the main bad guy (Victor Neri), a trigger-happy womanizer, is thrust into a testing ground of his own: a dirty movie theater inhabited by gay cruisers and service boys. It's this sly prankishness that gives the film its zing. It also, somewhat cleverly, sneaks in a tribute to departed action star Fernando Poe Jr. and the "dead" genre of Filipino action movies (practically nobody makes them anymore) -- which is likely the icing on the cake that inspired the sentimental folks at the Cinema Evalutaion Board to award the film an "A" rating.

Too bad that the film lacks the lustre of a good action movie. Portes, who, among indie godfathers, is probably the most earnestly conventional, shoots without frills, but with the rudimentary dryness of a teledrama. A couple of key scenes seem stupid and less believable because of hasty execution. But mostly, I fret at how much more suspenseful it could have been if it had a little more pizzazz.

GRADE: B

Related Links:
Marco Alcaraz Pics and Pitik Bulag Trailer
Negative Review by Philbert Dy
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Watch It This Week: Dose

It's one of my favorite films from last year, when it premiered at Cinema One Originals Movie Festival. Now, after a successful bow at this year's Barcelona Asian Film Festival, Dose finally makes its commercial run, at Robinsons Galleria IndieSine from July 1 to 7, 2009. It's a delicate beaut, and the way to enjoy it is to relish its many delicious paradoxes: Funny but sad, romantic but sinister, sexy but childlike, campy but sincere. You're not supposed to take pleasure in this, but maybe you should take pleasure in this. With its controversial subject matter and no easy answers, Dose is already being ignored by the country's award-giving bodies, but that doesn't mean you should, too.

Big Night

Jordan Herrera and Marco Morales

Business is slow in a provincial hole-in-the-wall girlie bar, so the men and women of the place – mostly women – stage a “big night” that will rake in the cash. Set in the 24 hours leading up to the event, Big Night (not to be confused with the Stanley Tucci movie about brothers in a restaurant) follows the exotic dancers in and out of the house, guiding us into their half-banal, half-sensational routines. In an early scene, the manager’s virtuous wife (Jaycee Parker) and the resident cook zigzag through the public market in the morning, buying ingredients for the night’s menu, also stopping by the ice plant to order lots of ice. Immediately, we’re immersed in the ordinariness of the activity as well as the extraordinariness of the situation that makes it necessary. Too often, our sex trade movies bask in the woeful, abnormal aspect of prostituion; The sneaky brilliance of Big Night is that it may be one of the few movies in which the business of selling sex is nuts-and-bolts unglamorous as it is alluringly strange, and sex workers are portrayed as both exotic and familiar with remarkable fluidity. It's what Prosti (2002), its closest forebear, would have been if that film's awkward romanticism was replaced by unsentimental frankness. Big Night also uses the overrated “real-time” style not as a mere gimmick in ironic gazing (see Serbis), but one that feels organic. Director Alejandro 'Bong' Ramos, who previously made the tricky but clunky Butas, redeems himself in a major way.

The men may not be in the spotlight, but they each have a (heterosexual) sex scene. Althea Vega, a firecracker of a woman, spends her sweaty afternoon shagging her boyfriend (Kian Cruz). In one cool sequence, Sophia Lee devirginizes a boy inside a sea hut while his peeping pals jerk off. It’s as hot a scene as any involving horny highschoolers, if that’s your thing.

Jordan Herrera plays the cliché role of a master with an iron fist. Watching him, I kept wondering why he’s been grunting and yelling in the same wife-beater alpha male role recently (Lalamunan, Pakpak), when he’s not even convincing. His cutie pie face and boytoy bod gets in the way of his pretend viciousness. Marco Morales joins the fray as a live sex performer hired especially for the night, and before you dismiss him as an actor who’s shed his clothes one time too many, the guy plays his most interesting role yet. His affection for his friend is more than a little homoerotic – their favorite memory is when they fucked each other for a Japanese audience. (Sorry, no flashbacks.) Plus, in one drunken scene, he storms naked into a dance rehearsal, hinting that the cocky confidence of this torero stems from an inner need to be watched.

The movie stalls when the big night finally arrives, as the women brace the stage for solo stripdances in predictable succession – but fans of popping boobies won’t get bored. For a while, it seems as if all the previous mini-stories don’t build up to anything. But then the movie takes a satsifying surprise turn. If you don’t like spoilers, stop reading now.

SPOILER ALERT!

The real climax is a police raid that seems to come out of nowhere only because in this busy day of people working hard to make a living, no one talks about the possibility of not making it. In a deft sleight of hand, the film asked us to hope for deliverance, deceived us into thinking the villain is the manager with a gun, then throws us into the reality that the party-pooper, the destroyer of hopes – the real villain – will come from outside. It’s unnerving that on the same week that Big Night debuted in theaters, a real-life massage clinic in Quezon City was raided by the QCPD City Hall Detachment and a camera crew from ABS-CBN, then exploited on national TV. In the operatic final act of Big Night, the matronly bar owner, glued to a wheelchair, laments that they have complied with all possible requirements yet still end up bullied by the powers-that-be. It resonates as a cry against the authorities that can impede on our lives whenever they wish to do so, without reason or warning. What is exploitation, really, and who are the real exploiters? As the end credits appear elegantly over a funereal coda, Big Night, though rough around the edges, reveals itself to be a film of raging humanity.

GRADE: B+

Related Links:
Negative Review by Philbert Dy
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New Trailer: Big Night