Comatose women, non-stop parties, and more

Noel Vera

From August 7 to 13 it's Cinemanila time again, and again the
organizers have come up with a whole cornucopia of films to feast
on, perhaps the best buffet spread of movies in Manila--so pull up
your chairs, raise your knives and forks, and dig in; you're
probably not going to get as rich a diet of movies again, at least
for the rest of the year.

One of the better films showing will be "Habla con Ella" (Talk To
Her, 2002), Pedro Almodovar's latest in what's considered the mature
stage of his filmmaking. The picture traces the story of two men--
one, Marco (soulful-eyed Dario Grandinetti) is a journalist who
falls in love with Lydia (strikingly beautiful Rosario Flores), a
woman bullfighter; the other is Benigno (slyly funny Javier Camara),
male nurse in charge of Alicia (Leonor Watling), a comatose
ballerina.

It sounds suspiciously like the setup for a dirty joke; it's
Almodovar's achievement that the movie doesn't end up an elaboration
of one. "Habla con Ella" is a funny enough film, beautifully shot
(by Javier Aguirresarobe); you can see Almodovar's mastery of
storytelling in the way he weaves between the lives of the two men,
then with a sudden deft twist tangles their fates in an inextricable
knot, a daisy chain of ballerina-nurse-journalist-bullfighter with
the unspoken bond between nurse and journalist somehow taking center
stage.

Flores as Lydia isn't used as much as you'd like her to be, with her
proud nose a visual rhyme to her proud matador's stance, and Watling
looks much too healthy for a coma patient of four years (granted
Benigno's constant loving care could conceivably prevent her from
developing bedsores, he can't do anything to prevent muscular
atrophy), but these are minor cavils. I do miss Almodovar's manic
spark, the love for high camp, cheerful perversity and the odd
surreal image abundantly on show in earlier works like "Law of
Desire" or "Matador" (it's a complaint I also have against Woody
Allen, that he had to tone down and couldn't stay as funny). But
artists, I suppose, have to grow, to try new directions; at least
the direction Almodovar took is arguably more interesting than
Allen's, in that there's a fine line between high camp and high
drama, black comedy and serious tragedy, and Almodovar, I think, has
managed to blur that line, almost to the point of nonexistence.

If fun and energy is what you're looking for though, you can't do
worse than catch Michael Winterbottom's "24 Hour Party People," a
retelling, of sorts, of the Manchester music scene, from the birth
of punk--TV journalist and soon-to-be rock impresario Tony Wilson
(Steve Coogan) witnessing the Sex Pistols in concert before an
audience of 42 people in the mid-'70s, to the closing of Factory
Records, Wilson's "record company" (the word he prefers is "artist's
collective") and of The Hacienda, his ruinously expensive dance club
(where, he claims, rave culture began) in the early '90s.

Wilson's statement on rave culture is typical of his hype, which is
considerable, and the film's claims to authenticity, which at best
are questionable, but that's part of what makes the film so
irresistible. Wilson early on says he's "a minor character in this
picture," a rare bit of modesty that the rest of the picture reveals
as an out-and-out lie: it's only incidentally about Manchester and
the music, and all about Factory Records and Tony Wilson.

Winterbottom and scriptwriter Frank Cotrell Boyce structure the film
like an extended version of one of Wilson's television pieces, with
Wilson weaving in and out of the action, providing commentary. They
paint a vivid portrait of Wilson who is, by turns, philosopher and
fool, quoting William Blake ("the road to excess leads to the palace
of wisdom") and receiving blowjobs in the back of a van; when he
finds himself hosting "Wheel of Fortune" he can't help likening the
show's spinning setpiece to Boethius' wheel, lifting up the fortunes
of some the same time it grinds the fortunes of others. Wilson, at
least in this film (and, I suspect, in his mind), is the classic
hapless man of circumstance who finds historical significance in
everything he does, or happens to him--when it's noted that only 42
people saw the Sex Pistols, he replies that only twelve attended The
Last Supper. The less people present, the more historical it all is,
according to Wilson's cockeyed view of the world.

Michael Winterbottom put chilly grays and a largely unobtrusive
camera style into his solemnly straightforward adaptation of
Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" ("Jude"); he set warmly-lit faces and
flames against an icy winter landscape in his elegiac transposition
of Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge" to early gold-rush America ("The
Claim"); he used speeded-up photography and brilliant neons to
give "Wonderland" a lonely, desolate feel. Here he takes a digital
video camera, largely handheld, in and out of various Manchester
locations, sprinkling his picture full of jokes, in-jokes, and meta-
in-jokes that turn around and bite themselves in the ass (at one
point, when Wilson shows us his wife committing adultery with Howard
Devoto of The Buzzcocks and Magazine in the men's room, the camera
swings to the real Howard at the sinks saying "this never happened,
you know…"). The relatively young British filmmaker (he's 42 years
old, as of this writing) has been making some of the most
consistently interesting movies in recent years, every time in a
radically different visual style; it's exciting to see one of his
latest work, and just as exciting (if not more so) to anticipate his
upcoming ones ("In This World," and "Code 46").

Other recommended Cinemanila films: Alfonso Arau's "Y Tu Mama
Tambien" (And Your Mother Too) is a funny, sexy ride through modern-
day Mexico, with two clueless youths and a hot-to-trot housewife in
an old convertible. Peter Zalenka's "The Buttoners" is a clever
little Czech film about strange people who steal buttons. Raymond
Red's "Anino" (Shadow), is his Cannes Palm d'Or-winning short, about
a photographer lost in the sidestreets of Manila. Shekar
Kapur's "Bandit Queen" is his sensationalized but nevertheless
electrifying biopic of Phoolan Devi, India's bandit queen. Chito
Rono's "Dekada '70" is a big-picture style yet nevertheless well-
made adaptation of the classic novel by Lualhati Bautista. Hideo
Nakata's "Ringu" (Ring) is a cleverly atmospheric horror thriller,
about a videotape that kills you in seven days. Tom Tykwer's "Run
Lola Run" is a stylishly made extended music-video about a girl
named Lola who, well, runs to save her boyfriend's life.

Of special interest are Amir Muhammad's documentary "The Big
Durian," Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman's "Divine
Intervention," Lars Von Trier's "Dogville," Francois
Ozon's "Swimming Pool, and (hopefully) Tikoy Aguiluz's
latest, "www.xxx.com," a digital-video feature about online
strippers.

The festival will have a retrospective on Wong Kar Wai, arguably
Asia's most highly regarded filmmaker. To be shown are his
early "Days of Being Wild," partly shot in the
Philippines; "Chungking Express," perhaps his most charming
work; "Happy Together," my favorite of his pictures; and his
latest, "In the Mood for Love."

The festival will also focus on two Filipino filmmakers, Jeffrey
Jeturian and Lav Diaz. Jeturian will be represented by "Tuhog"
(Larger than Life) an entertaining satire on the Filipino softcore
film industry, and "Pila Balde" (Fetch a Pail of Water), a lovingly
rendered portrait of squatter people (his best work, I think); Diaz
will be represented by "Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion" (Criminal of
Barrio Concepcion), an impressive debut feature that evokes (of all
things) Dostoevsky, and, hopefully, a documentary on the making of
his upcoming "Ebolusyon" (Evolution) tentatively titled "9 years
of 'Ebolusyon.'"

(Article first printed in Businessworld, August 7, 2003)

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