Puss 'n boobs

By Noel Vera

Robert Quebral's debut effort "Sex Drive" is handsomely photographed
by Neil Daza, the same cinematographer who gave Chito Rono's "Laro sa
Baga" (Playing With Fire, 2000) and "La Vida Rosa" (Life of Rosa,
2001) a lovely noirish sheen. The colors here are much less bleak,
though, mainly skin tones and warm sunset light; Daza's style is easy
on the eyes without being too glossy; there's room for some realism,
some grit.

That's about the best thing you can say about the picture; that, and
the occasionally funny dialogue Quark Henares and Quebral insert into
their script (Improvised? Doubt it). The main characters--two girls
(Maui Taylor, Katya Santos) on their way to see a faithless boyfriend
in the northern town of Sagada, and the handsome and mysterious
stranger (Wendell Ramos) they meet along the way--aren't deep, nor
were they meant to be. Instead, they're fantasy figures created by
two obviously heterosexual scriptwriters--think of the callow youths
in Alfonso Cuaron's "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (And Your Mother Too) writing
a sex-flick screenplay, you get the basic idea.

Cuaron is, of course, a giveaway: "Sex Drive" is basically "Y Tu
Mama" with sexes reversed (Maui and Katya play the Gael Garcia Bernal
and Diego Luna roles), with Julio Medem's "The Red Squirrel" (1993)
thrown in for good measure (mysterious stranger suffers amnesia from
bike accident). It's not a bad thing per se to lift your plot from
movies seen in the Cinemanila and Cine Europa film festivals--at
least the filmmakers showed enough gumption to attend. It's not even
a bad thing to simplify your sources--to drop the political subtext
that added tension to "Y Tu Mama," to ignore the thick atmosphere of
dread that transformed "The Red Squirrel" into an existential
thriller. A film will have its own needs and demands, necessitating
changes from its sources; key question is--how is the final result?

Mixed, unfortunately. To believe Katya and Maui's characters would
boldly go out for adventure and sex--that requires some stretch of
credibility in our conservative culture; to believe children would
strip unconscious Wendell of clothes after his bike accident--that's
another big stretch (city urchins might, but not provincial
children). A man fires a gun at our heroes, then chases them into a
parade full of people unalarmed by the shots; later (by way of
explanation) we see cowboys firing blanks into the air--but we should
have been shown the blanks earlier. Eventually our heroes make it to
Sagada where they wander about, enjoying the clean air and great sex,
as if the assassination attempt had never happened. Suspension of
disbelief is like a rope upon which the audience's good will hangs;
put too much weight on it and you're left with a jeering, unforgiving
crowd.

You could reinforce the rope with any number of things: style (I've
already mentioned Daza's camerawork, an enormous help); pacing (you
want to convey the stretches of boredom that accompany such trips
without actually boring your audience). Quebral knows how to edit--
some of the early sequences have witty ellipses--but he seems unable
to maintain the wittiness; some scenes go slack, others go on past
their point (it's tempting to say he hates to cut the beautiful shots
he and Daza have obviously worked hard at). Tragedy is easy, comedy--
especially sex comedy, where you have to arouse as well as amuse--
hard...you know the drill...

But even with the best director in the world, a magician for a
cinematographer, and Shakespeare (or at least Cuaron) for the basic
plot--if your actors are no good, you have nothing. Cuaron had
Bernal and Luna and the wonderful Maribel Verdu to flesh out his
picture, and they are dazzling--funny and sensuous and ultimately
truthful in their acting; Quebral has Taylor and Santos.

The difference is--to be kind--instructive. The two mouth the okay
dialogue as if they just learned them on the set, when they should be
firing them off in precise bursts, like automatic weaponry--that's
the bare minimum for verbal comedy; they should be running about in
all directions, performing exactingly choreographed chaos--that's the
bare minimum for physical, or slapstick, comedy; they should do all
this in either peekaboo clothes, or no clothes at all--that's the
bare minimum for sex comedies. Two out of three isn't bad, it's
terrible--all that money and effort and beautiful cinematography
spent on two incompetent comediennes, and one of them doesn't even
have authentically large breasts (or so I've heard).

The climax is wretched, of course; it's the kind Brian de Palma on a
good day might pull off, a climax you might applaud as daringly
outrageous, if the film had enough style and storytelling rigor to
stay this side of unbelievable (always that stretching, straining
rope). As it is, you don't buy the premise, you don't like the
actors, you don't believe in the twists along the way; the visuals
are stylish but not stylish enough; the dialogue is at times witty,
but the wit isn't sustained. With all this going against the picture
the ending, despite its cheerfully polysexual perversity, can't do
much of anything other than fall flat on its not-so-funny face.

Which is too bad--Quebral is being held up as a filmmaker to watch;
if the film is a hit (and it could be, lack of believability
notwithstanding), here's to hoping he does something different--or at
least something better--with his sophomore effort.

(First printed in Businessworld, 04.04.03)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)