The green, sanitized hellscape of Rafael Manuel’s ‘Filipiñana’
Filipiñana took seven years, five co-producing countries, 40 shooting days, eight golf courses, and one short film to materialize. This is the reality in numbers that producers Bianca Balbuena and Bradley Liew fronted at a press screening of the Sundance-winning film.
It recently came home to the Philippines, premiering as the closing film of this year’s Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival. Greeting it was an audience hot on the heels of the ongoing, and seemingly unending, demand for “quality” in Philippine cinema. Its theatrical run will be a test of whether such demand translates to patronage. But that’s par for the course, pun intended.
Filipiñana got its first life as an aforementioned short film that won the Silver Bear Prize at Berlinale in 2020. The short was a proof of concept for would-be producers, made after the full-length script was conceptualized. This is a point of interest for me, as I see the short as already complete. How does the short converse with the feature?
“This idea that the feature is an expansion of the short, I don’t really like that,” Manuel replied to my query during the talkback. “A short film and a full-length film are very different forms. The main difference is the running time.”
Both versions of Filipiñana follow tee girl Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto) as she treads through a vast golf course. The short focuses on her interiority. It clearly establishes Manuel’s thesis that the country club is a place of contradiction. Behind the lush and luxurious limbo of the golf course lie alienated, underpaid workers toiling for foreigners and the upper class.
The feature introduces new characters. Acting as a foil to Isabel is Clara (Carmen Castellanos), a mestiza from New York ambivalent to his uncle Renato’s (Carlos Siguion-Reyna) enthusiasm for golf and business. Then there’s Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman), the president of the country club. Isabel’s fascination with the fellow Ilocano belies a dark past between them.
Other new characters—like Palanca’s wife Maribel (Agot Isidro), Clara’s caddie Ina (Isabel Sicat), tee girl Janine (Nour Hooshmand), as well as returning characters Charlie (Elle Velasco), Susan (Sunshine Teodoro), and Micah (Micah Musa)—make up the denizens of the microcosmic world Manuel explores. All of them offer various synergistic perspectives to the thesis Manuel laid out in the short. For him, this is the luxury that the full-length form provides.
The feature also leans heavily on what’s unsaid, but that has always been in the short. Both films show brown-skinned teenage tee girls sketchily clad in short uniforms who are subservient to the rich, fair-skinned old men. The feature itself has lots of literal and visual euphemisms. Such pornographic undertones are both acknowledged and dismissed by Manuel, mentioning that sex, power, and desire are “very much related” before saying it’s more about projection that “says more about (the audience) than the film.”
Isabel is an observant character. Lead actress Agoto owes her acting approach to her Meisner mentors, who taught her to give importance to others and not herself. “Sobrang lala nung struggle ko kasi sobrang ingay ko in real life,” joked Agoto. “Ang lagi ko lang binabalikan kapag nag-o-overboard ako sa acting ay ‘yung imagery ng tanghaling tapat. I don’t have enough energy to show what I feel kasi nananaig ‘yung init.”
Filipiñana has the cinematic language of slow absurdist cinema that is prominent in foreign film festivals. It can be described as lyrical, humorous, and irreverent. Irreverent because it tends to uphold the facetious beauty of the country club while letting the rot underneath peek through. Xenia Patricia’s deliberate cinematography is precisely stitched together by Manuel himself as editor, with Vincent Villa’s sound design as the pulse.
“It’s a quiet film with small actions. If you think about how much change is needed (for) everything, nakaka-depress,” says Manuel. “But then, if you just take it day-by-day with the little things that you could do in your own gardens, then that seems manageable.” For Manuel, Isabel’s last act of running and exiting the frame is her most significant. It gives the feature an optimistic conclusion. The short’s ending offers a different insight: It is with community, among her fellow caddies, that Isabel finds a release.
Not to disparage the film’s beautiful execution or the filmmakers’ intentions, but I echo my sentiment years back from the short to the feature now: How much of its foreign festival success does it owe to its filed-down fangs? How can a film about the ravages of colonialism reconcile its open acceptance of the global aesthetic of inaction, whereas a social realist approach would’ve torn it down? These are questions underlying the form, not highlighting any fault of the filmmakers.
Manuel cited East Asian filmmakers like Tsai Ming-liang, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Jia Zhangke (who served as executive producer for Filipiñana) as his influences. The director is asked whether he gets annoyed by the comparisons between him and Wes Anderson. “I really can’t, because of the realities of cinematic distribution in this country. We have like one or two independent cinemas. I mean, how am I supposed to be mad at these references when these films are all we have access to?”
FIlipiñana is currently showing in limited theaters. It’s definitely different from what one may think of a typical “mainstream film.” You can already see detracting sentiments online; one stand-up comedian said that with the film’s slow pacing, the story could've been told in minutes. Ironically, the comic is unaware that it had been done years before. But as this article argues, more is different. To discern how different demands your full attention.
