Pink Flicks

Noel Vera

The British Council in cooperation with Mowelfund presents the Pink
Film Festival, a Festival of gay films starting June 16. A quick
survey of some of their films:

Nick Deocampo in his many documentaries and shorts ("The Sex
Warriors and the Samurai," "Isaak," "Private Wars," "Isaak") inserts
many fantasy images--Anton Juan dressed up in samurai drag, a near-
naked young man bound and presented as sacrifice--but his films are
basically either an exploration of the whys and wherefores Filipino
men and women prostitute themselves or are a meditation on his
endless search for his missing father. Very possibly the two main
themes are linked in his mind, though you have to watch them in a
single long viewing session to make this kind of connection.

Easily the best work he's ever done was his first, "Oliver," the
documentary he made on Reynaldo Villarama, a.k.a. Oliver, a
nightclub performer who inserts a lubricated mass of string up his
rectum, then spins it out onstage in the kind of floor show that
would make Spider-man blush in horror (every time I see ads to the
Hollywood blockbuster and its upcoming sequel, I can't help but
think of this fascinating film). Deocampo goes beyond the bizarre
act to follow the young man through his life--we meet his equally
strange extended family (strange mostly in the ways they have come
to acknowledge and accept Oliver); we see the contrast between the
slums he lives in and the sordid nightclubs he works in, and how one
feeds the other.

Joel Lamangan's "Pusong Mamon" (Soft Hearts) is an agreeable comedy,
the difference between it and most comedies being that it wears its
affirmatively gay heart proudly on its sleeve. From a script by
Ricky Lee and Mel Del Rosario, and co-directed by Eric Quizon (who
took over when Lamangan suffered a stroke), it's about a love
triangle between Lorna Tolentino, Albert Martinez, and Eric Quizon,
with Martinez and Quizon as lovers and Tolentino as the accidental
intruder in their lives. It's smart enough and light enough to be
entertaining, and everyone (especially Martinez, who gives the most
relaxed and assured performance) seems to be having fun.

But there's harmless light entertainment and then there's--well,
Carlos Siguion Reyna's "Ang Lalaki sa Buhay ni Selya" (The Man in
Her Life) is a mighty meditation on the issue that is homosexuality.
Rosanna Roces' runaway schoolteacher unwittingly marries Ricky
Davao's principal, who is gay. Gardo Verzosa's cad enters the
picture complete with roaring motorcycle to rev things up as Roces'
lover and Davao's blackmailer; Allan Paule sits heroically at the
sidelines as Davao's saintly but dying lover. The film is full of
memorable scenes--Verzosa standing outside Davao and Roces's
bedroom, unsubtly gunning his motorcycle engine; Paule coughing
tubercularly, then collapsing on cue; Davao (who, remarkably, gives
an excellent performance) daintily serving tea to uninvited guests.
Not quite like any other film I know; the ending has to be seen to
be believed.

Philippine cinema, I'm happy to say, has made more commercial gay
films than you would expect; but few can match (well, maybe
Deocampo's debut film) the raw intensity and realism of Lino
Brocka's "Macho Dancer." Set in Manila's seediest male strip joints,
the film mixes exploitation footage of naked male bodies (the uncut
version features a long row of them lustily masturbating) with the
kind of helter-skelter melodrama only Brocka knew how to do
well. "Macho Dancer" is actually a retread of Brocka's best-known
work, "Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag" (Manila in the Claws of
Neon), where a provincial (Allan Paule) goes to the big city, only
what was a quick if unsettling episode in "Maynila" (where the hero
visits a gay bar) is stretched out here to be the whole film. Paule
is serviceable--a sweet face with kissy lips and a smooth body--but
the memorable performances are by Daniel Fernando as Paule's friend
(who is painfully in love with him), and Jaclyn Jose, doing quietly
amazing things with the cliché role of a whore with a heart of gold.
The film was a small international hit (igniting the Philippines'
persistent reputation for making gay erotica) and, while not perhaps
one of Brocka's best, it stands head and shoulders above most others
of this genre.

Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine" is the kind of colorfully
opulent epic melodrama mainland China, and the film's director, has
come to be known for: think "Dr. Zhivago" but with a strong gay
theme. The film starts with two young boys, Chen Dieyi and Duan
Xiaolou, undergoing horrifically rigorous schooling at the Peking
Opera's training academy (prospective actors for Chinese opera are
trained from youth); they grow up into adults, playing a legendary
concubine and her emperor (Leslie Cheung and Zhang Fengyi,
respectively), and go through Chinese history together, from the
last years of China's decadence through the suffering it underwent
under Japanese occupation, through Communist takeover and the
Cultural Revolution. Along the way Xiaolou falls in love with a
prostitute named Juxian (Gong Li), and their love threatens the
friendship between the two men.

What's not to like about this movie? It sweeps, it soars, it has the
kind of ravishing cinematography (by Changwei Gu, who also did "Red
Sorghum," "In The Heat of the Sun," "Devils on the Doorstep") that
would turn David Lean green with envy. Zhang and Gong are wonderful
as macho man and his spirited and courageous wife, but it's Leslie
Cheung who stands out as the complexly conflicted Dieyi, a woman
trapped in a man's body, hopelessly in love with his emperor and
lifelong friend.

Wong Kar Wei's "Happy Together" is easily my favorite among Wong's
pictures because it's the one film in his career that seems to
depict (rather than Wong's default emotional tone of swooning and
rather distant nostalgia) genuine, intensely felt human pain. Leslie
Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu Wai are lovers slowly falling apart in
Buenos Aires; Wong demonstrates that if you have to endure a breakup
(which is never easy), you could do worse than endure it in this
city, with its gloriously somber streetlights and chicly rendered
neons (Chris Doyle did the offhandedly beautiful cinematography).
Not much of a plot, and precious little dialogue, but the delicate
nuances of character and terribly slow disintegration of love that
Wong and Doyle capture with their camera are more than enough reason
to watch--and love--this film.

(First published in Businessworld, June 18, 2004)

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