A 'journey of grace' for Arnold

MANILA, Philippines - The recent premiere of Ron Morales’ film Graceland at the Robinsons Galleria was attended by a good-sized crowd that seemed to appreciate this small but daring movie.

“Graceland isn’t a film about Elvis Presley, but yes, I get asked that a lot,” says its Filipino-American director Ron, who flew in for the premiere. Ron was born and raised in the US (specifically, in New Jersey), but despite this fact, his movie shows that he has a pretty good grasp of social issues that affect the country such as corruption in high places, prostitution and poverty.

Now, a movie is only as good as the story it tells and the actor who stars in it, and this respect is where Graceland succeeds surprisingly well. The movie’s central character is Marlon Villar, a driver to a corrupt congressman (played by character actor Menggie Cobarrubias) who sleeps with young, nubile schoolgirls. It is Marlon’s job to pick up the girls, pay them and drive them home. This is the screw on which the movie turns.

But first, a comment on the casting of Marlon: Director Ron could probably have assigned the role to a more known, more mainstream actor, but Arnold Reyes somehow makes the character believable. He succeeds in turning what could be a potential weakness on his part — his not being a marquee name — into strength. Arnold’s Marlon is just the right mix of insecure and vulnerable, and it is what makes the character work. It makes Marlon sympathetic and helps the audience understand his dilemma. Maybe the best way of putting it would be to say that there is rawness to Arnold’s portrayal of Marlon that gives it credibility.

You sense his desperation when his daughter is mistakenly kidnapped; you sense how trapped he feels when he is forced to lie to his wife, who inquires after the whereabouts of their daughter even as she (the wife) lies in the hospital battling kidney disease. Finally, he is able to communicate clearly how tangled the web of lies he has woven around himself, and how he wants to get out, but he doesn’t know how. He just keeps sinking deeper and deeper until things come to a head.

One of the guests at the premiere was actress Maria Isabel Lopez, and on the way out of the theater, she ran into Arnold and recognized him. She asked: “Ikaw ba ’yung driver?” When Arnold said yes, she shook his hand and complimented him on a fine performance. Arnold, who had never met Isabel before this, was understandably flattered, and with good reason. It was a compliment that was well-deserved.

A few days before the premiere, word came out that Graceland had been put on the shortlist of Filipino films under consideration to be the country’s official entry to the Oscar Foreign Language Film race. As this is being written, it is all over the papers — and social networking sites — that another film (Bwakaw, starring veteran actor Eddie Garcia) was selected for the honor, but that doesn’t negate whatever there is to like about the film — and the performance of Arnold is just one of them.

Doing Graceland was, well, a “journey of grace” for Arnold. It marks a lot of firsts for him: His first time to travel to the US, and his first time to have a film exhibited at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Arnold, of course, is no stranger to the world of independent filmmaking. He’s starred in the indie flicks Isda, Adela, Muli, Senior Year, The Leaving and Astig; for the latter film, he won a Best Supporting Actor award at the Cinemalaya 2009 Film Festival. It was a clear recognition of his talent as an actor. It may be too early to predict this with any certainty, but Coco Martin started out pretty much the same way, by making a mark in indie films — and look where he is now. Certainly, the possibility is there, bubbling just beneath the surface. There is a chance that that kind of once-in-a-lifetime fortune could happen for Arnold, too. Who knows?

Arnold has just set out on this acting journey. He is relatively new to the field, and yet, if he’s already showing this much spark this early in the game, you can well predict where and how he’s going to end up. He may not be a mainstream star yet, but he has clearly found his niche in the industry, and he — and the world of indie filmmaking — will be all the better for it.

Graceland has participated in the Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas from Sept. 20 to 27 and will be at the Athens Greece Film Festival, Ghent Belgium International Film Festival, Valladolid Spain Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival (where incidentally, another film of Arnold titled Dyablo is also in competition) and the San Diego Asian Film Fest.