The brainchild of movie mogul Wilson Tieng and film director Brillante Mendoza, the recent Sinag Maynila Independent Film Festival is similar to the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ (CCP) Cinemalaya. Like the latter, it offers an opportunity for promising filmmakers to have an audience for their works, and hopefully have their place in the sun. So I’m just guessing it’s the reason the festival is named Sinag.
It’s an irony that Sinag Maynila opened during a typhoon. Weary of having to traverse flooded streets, we got to catch only two entries in the festival’s latter part. The two films were intriguing; one was about dementia, and the other, schizophrenia. Both were championed by women who could well be called the “titas” of Indie films.
One emerged the festival’s big winner. Actress/producer Rebecca Chuaunsu’s Her Locket was adjudged Best Picture. She bagged Best Actress Award for playing her film’s lead protagonist, a 70-year-old woman with dementia. The film also triumphed in the directing and screenwriting categories, among others.
Our first impression was this movie was probably a combination of Driving Miss Daisy and The Notebook. But we were wrong; Her Locket is an original story. It’s actually a very simple one, yet it encompasses Filipino culture, Chinese traditions, and even relevant social issues. Screenwriters E.J. Tiglao (he also directed the film) and Maze Miranda did it without having to be sanctimonious.
Elora Espano won Best Supporting Actress Award for the caregiver role in ‘Her Locket.’ (Photo by Erickson dela Cruz)
Chuaunsu plays Jewel Ouyang, once a famous actress, but who’s been out of the spotlight for so long. She now lives in an old house with her only child, Kyle (Boo Gabunada), a neophyte lawyer. Jewel’s behavior is erratic. She seems normal and friendly one moment, and hysterical and violent the next. In one lucid moment, she and her new caregiver, Tere (Elora Espano), do some housecleaning. She discovers her priceless old locket which revives so many memories of her youth. Strangely, the sudden outbursts stop recurring; it’s as if the locket is some medication that keeps her mind and her memory sharp.
With her revitalized memories, she becomes a storyteller to her caregiver as she recalls her unhappy childhood. Her parents strictly adhered to Chinese traditions, she says. This meant they favored her brother over her at all times. They were also making arrangements for her marriage to a scion of another wealthy family. But Jewel was a rebel. She married a Filipino and studied to become an actress. Her stories are told in flashbacks. And her memories now intact, Jewel decides to settle a score with her brother, who has done her an injustice after their father passed away.
What makes Her Locket so good is the way the filmmakers did away with clichés that plague Filipino movies. The romantic scenes are charming and cleverly written, not designed to accommodate a star’s acting technique or physical attributes. Scenes of mourning are brief, but they leave a huge impact because viewers are given the opportunity to get familiar with the characters.
‘Her Locket’ says more about Chinese traditions than all the ‘Mano Po’ movies put together
Her Locket says more about Chinese traditions than all the Mano Po movies put together. With all due respect to the late and great Mother Lily, she had a tendency to miscast actors in her Mano Po movies. No matter how talented they are, the likes of Boots Anson Roa or Richard Gutierrez were never convincing as Filipino-Chinese. The protagonists in Her Locket are all played by Chinese-Filipino actors. They aren’t household names, but the ironic fact that we’re unfamiliar with their work makes them more believable. Having a star would have been too distracting, and the film would have been hindered by his or her familiar mannerisms and fake Chinese accent.
The show obviously belongs to Chuaunsu, who seamlessly alters Jewel’s mental state without overacting. She gets the audience on her side at every moment, even when she starts hurting the people around her. We’re left hoping Jewel could be healed. Chuaunsu‘s acting is so nuanced and convincing that at some point, each viewer gets to associate a facet in Jewel with that of one’s own mother. Every acting award Chuaunsu has received so far is well-deserved.
The show obviously belongs to Chuaunsu, who seamlessly alters Jewel’s mental state without overacting
The rest of the cast is also superb. As caregiver, Elora Espano makes the perfect foil to Chuaunsu. She won the Festival’s award for Best Supporting Actress.
Director E.J Tiglao is a straightforward storyteller. His direction and screenplay don’t compete for attention. However, the motives of young Jewel (played splendidly by Sophie Ng) aren’t fully explained. The script doesn’t shed much light on what made her want to be an actress, or how she became a major star. We don’t get a taste of the extent of her celebrity; there are no reminiscenses of her glamorous past, and no namedropping of the famous people she has worked with.
The flashbacks promise to make viewers of a certain age feel nostalgic. Tiglao seemed to have fun bringing audiences back to the 1970s when young people wore bell bottoms and did the Hustle in discos almost every night. Those scenes look so genuine, as if I could see my own aunts and uncles in their younger carefree days gyrating to the soundtrack—like a fusion of Van McCoy and the Bee Gees.
These lovely details make Her Locket a wonderful film that puts a spotlight on human values and decency set against a colorful mosaic of Chinese and Philippine culture.
Director Joan Lopez Flores with the star of her film ‘What You Did,’ Tony Labrusca
The second film we saw was What You Did, a psychological horror movie helmed by Joan Lopez Flores. While she’s written and directed TV shows and documentaries, What You Did is the first feature film she wrote and directed. Her film is about twin brothers, Arvin and Ace (both played by Tony Labrusca). In this psychological drama, one of the twins is weak and the other evil.
Ace is the evil one, and their being trapped together in a tiny high-rise condo unit during the pandemic lockdowns has magnified their individual character traits. Arvin revisits a childhood trauma in his dreams. Ace starts posing as Arvin on social media, turning his shy twin into a YouTube star. Then Ace begins flirting with the girl Arvin had coveted but lost back in college. In short, he paints Arvin into an embarrassing corner.
This premise has been used several times, and the denouement is predictable. The movie Black Swan actually comes to mind. What differentiates What You Did is the story’s setting. It happens during the pandemic, when people felt isolated and hopeless. Arvin’s paranoia is aggravated by his twin brother.
What differentiates ‘What You Did’ is the story’s setting. It happens during the pandemic, when people felt isolated and hopeless
The movie has a slow start, as Flores has opted for the slow-burn method to get under the skin of her audience. We’re bound to get spellbound and jolted at a certain point. Yet for a psychological thriller, What You Did lacks shock value. At best, Ace’s antics play like a cute skit in a sitcom. It’s as if the director is hesitant to go all out with the insanity happening within the claustrophobic confines of the condo. What You Did doesn’t create the atmosphere that causes paranoia for both the protagonist and the audience. Atmosphere is to films of this genre what location is to real estate developers and restaurateurs.
The story may not be too original, but the person who tells it shows promise as a director. For one, viewers are never conscious of the fact that it’s just one actor who plays the twins. Virtuoso editing and camerawork make the scenes with both Ace and Arvin look real. Any camera trick that might have been used is completely unnoticeable.
Tony Labrusca in the climactic scene of ‘What You Did’
The movie’s ultimate success rests on the shoulders of Tony Labrusca. He’s up to the challenge most of the time. It would have been easy for any actor to differentiate the twins by using broad gestures. But Labrusca does it in a subtle way. He does seem to enjoy playing the nefarious Ace more—to the point that we had more fun watching him play the bad boy. We even felt he was doing his weakling brother a big favor.
