By Carmen Aquino Sarmiento
Movie Review
KALEL 15
Written and directed by Jun Robles Lana
ONCE AGAIN, Jun Robles Lana paints for us a soberly excoriating portrait of Philippine society, from the POV of one of its most vulnerable members: 15-year-old Kalel Fernandez (Elijah Canlas), who is HIV-positive, homeless, and sells sexual favors just to survive. He is the illegitimate son of Father George, a respected, elderly priest (Eddie Garcia). That is a knowingly mischievous dig at the institutional Catholic church’s obdurate stand against reproductive health (RH) rights, a major factor in the alarming rise in the Philippines of the incidence of teenage pregnancy, as well as of diseases such as HIV and cervical cancer. Note that RH includes comprehensive sexuality education for all, but especially for the youth who make up the majority of our population. RH also means ensuring the easy access to affordable means of protection, like condoms. Fr. George is more annoyed than concerned when he learns Kalel is HIV-positive. He gives him a small bottle of virgin coconut oil, and acts like he has done his duty by the boy.
Poor Kalel has no one to turn to. Certainly not his feckless, footloose, and fancy-free mother Edith (Jacklyn Jose, with impeccable comic timing, and obviously having fun), their small town’s aging hotsy-patootsy, who does not worry about her youngest child’s health, but rather over her non-existent reputation, should the community learn about Kalel’s disease. Her two children are at best, underpaid labor for her carinderia (roadside eatery). They work for their keep. Only Edith knows who the father of her older daughter Ruth (Elora Espano) is. Ruth might have followed in her mother’s footsteps, but she chose to have an abortion instead. This has not led to better life choices, as her boyfriend of the moment, Danny (Cedrick Juan), is a violently abusive shabu addict. Despite the siblings’ constant spats, they cling to one another. When Kalel loses his sister, he is truly, despairingly alone.
Elijah Canlas is one of our finest actors, regardless of age. He is intense while being transparently vulnerable. In a particularly poignant scene at the police station, when he sees the plateful of food which the officer-on-duty sends away, Canlas conveys his gnawing hunger and longing, through just a teensy lift of his head and a leaning forward of his torso. The slightest shifts in his gaze, a tremor about the lips, speak volumes more than the oratorical declamations and effortful physical exertions which audiences here generally mistake for good acting. Thus, there were complaints that this film was “slow.” It’s certainly not the feel-good or conventional cinematic product. Nonetheless, its all too brief commercial run is undeserved, as its story, though neither pleasant nor easy, is one which we should heed.
Kalel’s name, like a Binisaya version of the poet’s name, as in Gibran, evokes the pitiful aspirations of the underclass. One imagines that his own mother Edith, probably just liked the sound of the name Khalil, but had never read the poet, nor knew how to spell his name. Nonetheless, she considers herself fortunate that her second child was sired by their town’s priest. At least, Fr. George has the wherewithal to provide some support, no matter how minimal and perfunctory. Kalel attends a Catholic school at the parishioners’ expense, but that is practically the full extent of his priest-father’s paternal involvement. Fr. George’s emotional distance and virtual indifference, leave Kalel hungering and longing for the male gaze.
Robles Lana gives us a disturbing glimpse of the MSM (Men having Sex with Men) subculture on social media, where Kalel is something of a star. He thrives on the numerous likes his posts receive. Without a functional father, and having only his harpy of a mother, he finds affirmation in the unwholesome attentions paid to him by shadowy strangers, mostly older men, lurking on the internet. These risky but profitable encounters have afforded the boy luxuries beyond his means, such as comic books and gadgets, which his neglectful parents never gave him.
Cinematographer Carlos Mendoza’s austere black and white photography recalls cinema classics about other luckless and troubled youths, such a Truffaut’s The Four Hundred Blows (1959), though its shifting and shadowy sheen is more resonant of the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s controversial imagery of homosexual hustlers, substance abusers, and other fringe types. This fits the bleakness of Kalel’s story: he also subsists along our society’s margins. Kalel 15’s sensibility might be the obverse of Larry Clark’s Kids which introduced Chloe Sevigny in the role of Jennie, a young girl who gets HIV from her first lover, a promiscuous boyfriend. The scene where the addict Danny gives Kalel and his high school barkada (gang of friends) hallucinogenic drugs, is reminiscent of the one in Kids where Fidget, a raver boy, makes the innocent Jennie swallow a pill more potent than “Special K” (the horse tranquilizer Ketamine). She passes out, and is raped. While he is high, Kalel reveals to his barkada that he is HIV-positive. Just as hypocrisy shrouds Kalel’s parents, his barkada’s loud protestations of sympathy and support at Kalel’s revelation prove to be mere lip service.
Abandoned by family and friends, Kalel takes charge of his life. He grows up too quickly: facing his mortality, while fending for his day-to-day survival. An indication of Canlas’s meticulous and seamless technique was how even his speaking voice was deeper than that of a typical 15-year-old’s. Inside, he was no longer a child. When the lesions from his Kaposi’s Sarcoma spread and become intolerably itchy, Kalel takes himself to the HIV clinic, because no one else will. The mild-mannered doctor observes that Kalel and his mother never came for counseling, but doesn’t seem overly concerned that this minor is in grave danger of falling through the cracks.
Although the Philippines is still a low-HIV country, our rate of infection is the fastest rising. Robles-Lana does not go the instructional film route. We may not like the things we learn about our society through Kalel’s story. But, as our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal wrote about the cancer in our society, of which the plight of those like Kalel is but one symptom: “Desiring your well-being which is our own, and searching for the best cure, I will do with you as the ancients of old did with their afflicted: expose them on the steps of the temple… And to this end, I will attempt to faithfully reproduce your condition, without much ado. I will lift part of the shroud that conceals your illness.” Now if only more of the movie-going public would look. Like Rizal’s novels, Kalel 15 should be required viewing for high school kids, their parents and teachers, whether they like it or not.
