New women ‘direks’

Brutus is the first full-length feature of Iloilo native Tara Illenberger, that won the Jury Prize (equivalent to 2nd best picture) in the Cinemalaya film festival and competition last July. We’d heard good, intriguing things about it, so that we weren’t disappointed when we decided to catch its last CCP screening on a rainy Saturday before the winning entries moved over to the UP Film Center for August playdates.

Subtitled Ang Paglalakbay, Brutus is roughly the story of two Mangyan kids who help transport illegally cut logs in Mindoro, a clandestine operation given the slang term “brutus.”

The elder girl and younger boy each have their separate family concerns to deal with: the girl looking for an elder brother who has gone missing while doing his own brutus, and the boy wanting to raise enough money to buy medicine for his sick younger sibling. Their journey down the river while transporting the illegal logs hidden beneath a bamboo raft, and the varied persons and characters they meet along the way, are what mostly comprise the film that also won best musical score for Joey Ayala, best cinematography for Jay Abello, and best supporting actor for Yul Servo as the communist cadre who befriends the kids while on the run from the military.

Ayala’s score fits the movie to a tee, his ethnic world music instrumentation giving emphasis to the proceedings, hand in glove with Abello’s quiet, scenic landscapes that capture well the Mindoro countryside and the fast fading culture, a conjunction that is like a portrait of the artist as a Mangyan.

The Ayala siblings seem to be a favorite of the indie circuit, themselves being independent musicians, as Joey’s younger sis Cynthia’s Comfort in your Strangeness was used as soundtrack for last year’s Still Life, and then two years ago Joey’s Walang Hanggang Paalam played in the background in the denouement scene of Donsol.

Abello, a protégé of Bacolod son Peque Gallaga, again exhibits his lyric bent with camera, same way he did in his Ligaw Liham last year whose duotone, period piece look was most pleasing to the eyes.

But it is to the newcomer Illenberger’s credit that the movie succeeds in its own unpretentious pace, with the right amount of social consciousness thrown in without being pedantic about it.

Her two teenage actors too are a refreshing sight, who we are told are authentic Mangyans doing their small part to help save the vanishing forest. The girl in particular reminds us of Rebecca Lusterio when she first appeared in Cesar Montano’s Panaghoy sa Suba, with the same kind of earthy, unspoiled appeal. When she puts on blush on with achuete and fixes herself up to gain the cadre Ka Milo’s notice, the close-up of her pays indirect tribute to another coming of age film in the first Cinemalaya of four years ago, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros. But this time the rite of passage is for a real dalaga.

Even Ronnie Lazaro stars briefly as a soldier whose toothache is cured by some native medicine, and whose ultimate showdown with Servo is no mere footnote to the senselessness of the ongoing war among Filipinos.

The strength of Brutus, and Illenberger as well, is the subtle advocacy, no hardsell that would make the story and the director’s vision suffer. It gets its message across well, the grandness of its cinema noir a counterpoint to the understated tone.

The only other women director who made waves in Cinemalaya ’08’s full-length feature category was Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil, whose Boses tells a bittersweet tale of friendship between a reclusive violinist and a boy recovering from the trauma of parental abuse.

As far as we know this is only the second film of Ongkeko, after the critically acclaimed Pusang Gala some years ago, though a script/film treatment of hers was shortlisted in the same competition last year, a type of provincial horror movie.

What was striking about Boses was not the riveting violin playing by Coke Bolipata whose distracted demeanor was perfect for the role, but the suffused, available light photography of the veteran Nap Jamir, who also did Maximo Oliveros.

Again the child actors here are a revelation, both the traumatized kid who turns out to be a musical prodigy, and his best friend, the swarthy girl who was also memorable in Pablo Biglang-awa and company’s Inang Yaya.

An indie production such as this would be incomplete without the strong support lent to it by actors Ricky Davao (who also starred in Pusang Gala) and Cherry Pie Picache, another indie favorite.

The advocacy against child abuse may be heavy-handed at times, and the melancholic violin work doesn’t help calm down things any, but Boses remains a thoroughly entertaining film without having to make commercial concessions.

Ongkeko knows her child psychology well, and the film itself is well thought out, from the catharsis scene of the kid at the beach to Bolipata’s coming to terms with the death of his lady love, although he was visibly bashful (is that the right word?) in his kissing scenes with Meryll Soriano.

An added treat to Boses is that we get to see the lay of the land in Bolipata’s Zambales retreat, where in real life he trains actual prodigies, some no doubt having themselves suffered a form of abuse, or are we merely imagining things.

That final concerto where student and master play together in a reinforced quartet, is one classical tableaux that can never overemphasize the strength of spirit, and how film can be a manifestation of that spirit.

Both Boses and Brutal utilize ghosts as peripheral characters in the plot line: the violinist’s dead girlfriend and the Mangyan girl’s departed father and elder brother, all of them like elementals or guides or totems of conscience.

Much like films like these have affected not only the mainstream but also their fellow indies, creating another path in the wilderness with a distinctly feminine mindset and sensibility.