Gallaga’s blonde on blonde

When in doubt of the country’s leadership, watch a movie. Better still, watch a local movie that departs from the usual mainstream formulas. And just as the country was in political tumult making bedfellows stranger than strange, the Cinemalaya Independent film festival ran for a week at the CCP during which time Peque Gallaga’s first movie in six years, Pinoy Blonde (dubbed as not your typical Pinoy film) opened in commercial theaters.

It was probably not mere happenstance that artist and reclusive comic strip writer Roxlee wound up in a cameo role not only in Pinoy Blonde, but also in a number of films both in competition and exhibition at the Cinemalaya festival. Roxlee, forever the renegade and himself a filmmaker who started in Super 8 animation, seems to have found a second vocation as a dakilang extra, landing bit roles in Pepot Artista, Lasponggols, Ebolusyon ng Pamilyang Pilipino, and Camiling Story. He has the magic of pokerfaced acting.

But first things first. Gallaga, coming out of semi-retirement and self-imposed hibernation in his native Bacolod, pays tribute to the old masters Brocka and Bernal, as well as a few foreign influences along the way (e.g., Peckinpah and Tarrantino). His lead players, the mag-tiyohin Epi and Boy2 Quizon, play off each other quite naturally, their repartee taking Dolphy humor a step or two further into transcendental drollness.

At times the dialogue may seem contrived as several lines are lifted from famous movies, mouthed by the Quizons who play cousins here and aspiring filmmakers, but that is only the director paying homage to what for him could be unforgettable lines from the silver screen.

There is a strong influence and slant towards a music video mindset, with selected animation and fantasy sequences including a sperm swimming toward an egg of our imagination – is this fission or fusion?

The accompanying soundtrack music, featuring among the best in the local independent scene, is one of the best and sustained we’ve heard in years, mainly because it is unlike your usual uneven soundtrack.

Pinoy Blonde opens with the strains of Radioactive Sago’s Astro, a signal that we are in for a long, strange trip, stranger than any political bedfellow.

There is a scene in the movie where the exchange between the characters of Jaime Fabregas and Ricky Davao could well encapsulate our weird life and times: Fabregas asks Davao to define the word "pasista," to which the latter being a UP graduate happily obliges, citing as prime example the late dictator Marcos. When Fabregas asks Davao if GMA is a pasista, Davao hits it on the nail: "Hindi pa, elitista pa lang ’yon."

An apt single from the movie soundtrack could be the Brockas’ Action!, a thrash rock number that uses the titles of Filipino movies as lyrics. Not a bad debut for a band composed of indie directors Khavn dela Cruz, Lav Diaz and (here he is again in some instant cameo) Roxlee, and whose performances are mostly spur of the moment conceptual, with Dela Cruz being the main man and instigator and lead guitarist.

Pinoy Blonde ends wonderfully and not just because of the Pinwheel song that plays as the credits roll, Masayang Kalungkutan written by Fabregas’ son Minco, because this very happy sad ending is worthy of a Gallaga comeback out of an extended sabbatical down south. The director of Oro, Plata, Mata, Scorpio Nights and Unfaithful Wife is welcomed with a B grade from the Cinema Evaluation Board for Pinoy Blonde, which ironically enough is the first time Unitel gets a grade less than A after a streak of three movies that won 100 percent tax rebates. Unitel’s chief Tony Gloria should not be disheartened. The Gallaga film has a better soundtrack than any of the previous A-graded Unitel movies, the impact not merely visual but aural and even visceral, the blonde on blonde of Bacolod’s native son.

Earning similar B-grades from the CEB were a pair of productions from ABS-CBN Star Cinema’s creative arm, North Diversion Road directed by Dennis Marasigan, and Sandalang Bahay by Mark Gary.

Based on a play by Tony Perez, North Diversion Road revolves around a conversation between a man and a woman in a car, at the nadir of their relationship. John Arcilla and Irma Adlawan explore the various possible situations and variations of such an unraveling, a reverse kama sutra because here the disengaging can only be painful but through a kind of heroic coda, made less bitter. There is only so much one can do with material perhaps better suited for the stage, for which it was originally intended. But while the transposition from stage to film may not exactly be seamless, Adlawan and Arcilla give worthy, extraordinary performances, to make us do a double take on such matters as love gone bad, infidelity, and the threshold of mortality, among other profoundly earth-shaking subjects. We can almost hear Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky playing in the background, except that Scorsese used it first for Taxi Driver, just before the De Niro character tipped the TV set over and down crashing, what an empty surprise to feel so alone.

Sandalang Bahay is a quiet lyrical film about a father of three daughters who gets abandoned by his family for mistakenly being suspected of pedophilia involving the three girls’ male playmate. As noted by some CEB members, the sub-par equipment did not do justice to the potentially epic sweep of the cinematography. Think European sense and sensibility suddenly gone third world low tech, and you get an idea of the conflicts and extremes at work here.

The three daughters grow up like everyone does and return to visit their now old mama, who had suspected their dad Cesar (Albert Martinez) of fondling the boy next door.

Mads Nicolas, Sharmaine Centenera and Gilleth Sandico acquit themselves well as Tres Marias, as they finally come to terms with a dark spot in their past when they return to their old hometown, the Sandalang Bahay, or literally the house one leans on, and discover that their old man was wrongly accused by their mom (the young one played by Adriana Agcaoili formerly of Batibot).

A bittersweet affair this movie is and employs Sideways-like humor, with some fine use of opera but the sound is very uneven, and the Ronnie Lazaro character doesn’t really age all that much with the passage of years, as more than one CEB member noted, maybe because life in the province (looks like Mindoro, undiscovered Puerta Galera side) is less complicated.

Sandalang Bahay is a moral tale that doesn’t compel because it is never didactic, and should inspire a lesson in all of us to shun rash courses of action. Something can still be said for the slow burn.