By Menchu Aquino Sarmiento
Movie Review
Neomanila
Directed by Mikhail Red
MIKHAIL RED has a nice sense of the cinematic visual, but to enjoy his films, one must suspend disbelief. Recall Maya, the protagonist of his critically acclaimed Birdshot, who has lived all her life next to an eagle sanctuary, but even as a young adult, refuses to recognize the eagles next-door as an endangered protected species. Her father’s many warnings fall on her pretty deaf ears. She purposely kills one of the danged birds and serves it to daddy as adobo. She lets loose a shit storm, resulting in his torture and death by the authorities. Then she lets her father’s murderer, who also slaughtered her pet dog, go scot free. Girl, what were you thinking?
We Filipinos were never much for critical thought anyway. The better to enjoy Neomanila, Red’s third full-length feature, choc-full of artfully lighted and staged scenes of Manila’s photogenic degradation and inhumanity. From the start, don’t ask why the protagonist Toto (Tim Castillo) must smuggle a razor blade to his jailed older brother Kiko, inside his mouth, making speech impossible and thus further rousing the grumpy desk sergeant’s suspicion with his silence. And it’s not like there’s a shortage of sharp objects in our jail cells where they do tattoos as homeroom arts and crafts. In case we don’t get it that life is cheap, later an inexplicably mute, hand-cuffed prisoner purposely brings in a hand grenade and totals the entire police station. Those parak must have a death wish as well.
Is the film set in a parallel universe-Manila, hence the “Neo?” Here, the MRT trains are not guarded and conveniently serving as a short time motel for Toto. Later, the train depot is the scene for the killing of another small-time pusher who stashes her sachets in her baby’s diaper. Raoul and Irma keep ready-made natokhang signs out of torn cardboard for their victims in their car. Always good to be prepared even when you have to go through checkpoints.
Channeling Netflix’s Breaking Bad, the sexy assassin Irma (Eula Valdes) has a hole-in-the wall pest control firm (with no employees) in a converted garage as her day job. It’s a minor marvel that such a dinky operation affords them incongruously spiffy hazmat suits. Here’s their chance to dramatically vomit before the cameras. Irma herself lives in a tiny decrepit room off her garage office, with a single closet. Her space is barely larger than her bathroom. It’s unseemly for the boss lady to be staying in what looks like servant’s quarters. From her closet, she gives Toto T-shirts to upgrade his wardrobe, but when it comes to her own flesh and blood, she refuses. Anyway, having her son run around naked in a busy Manila street is nod to the first Breaking Bad episode where Walter White is in his tighty whiteys.
In Breaking Bad, they deal and kill for kilos of meth. In true Pinoy tingi style, here they do it for a couple of grams and a handful of cell phones. Irma’s henchman-lover Raoul speaks the truth when he rages in exasperation at how hard it is to make a living. They’re barely making it. Even the gang boss Dugo lives in a slum. Maybe the lesson is that crime does not pay.
