Fueling the fire of female rage

By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter

Movie Review
Sisa
Directed by Jun Robles Lana

SISA — an intentional reference to the iconic madwoman character from José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere — is a female-led revenge thriller by acclaimed director Jun Robles Lana. Truly befitting Women’s Month, it is a searing story of how women can only rely on themselves for their emancipation.

This film is set towards the end of the Philippine-American War. It follows the titular character Sisa (played by film legend Hilda Koronel in her comeback role after a decade out of the spotlight), who seems to wander into a remote American concentration camp made up mostly of Filipino women. Here, we see in their struggles the tensions of benevolent assimilation, as those deemed savages must adapt to the ways of the colonizer, be it in their form of dress, their language, or their use of cutlery.

It is in this environment that the director brings us an enthralling feminist period piece, involving the worried Delia (played by Eugene Domingo), who tries to dissuade her teenage daughter Nena (Angellie Sanoy) from becoming too close to the white woman teaching the children English; the distraught Ofelia (Tanya Gomez), still in mourning after the capture of her husband, the village chief; and self-assured widow Leonor (Jennica Garcia), who is the paramour of the American garrison’s commander. Without spoiling how their arcs develop through the film, each plays their part to perfection.

This revenge thriller is anchored by Koronel’s stoic, mysterious Sisa, whose madness is weaponized as we discover her true motives. She’s probably the most engaging figure of subterfuge in Philippine cinema to date, as she is revealed to be a rebel leader spying on the American camp to gain intel for an imminent attack. In the process, she gets to know all the women in the village and their struggles, which ultimately affects the decisions she makes in the last act. Naming her after Rizal’s famous madwoman is a feminist move, subverting this symbol of a victim of foreign abuse and turning her into an icon that fights against it. Being played by Koronel guarantees the very picture of subtle discontent brewing beneath the beautiful, features (young in Lino Brocka’s Insiang, just as potent now that the actress is more advanced in age). Plus, Teresa Barrozo’s disconcerting score effectively matches her intense psyche, pushed not alongside dialogue but through the depth of Koronel’s gaze.

The other women fill out the textures of interpersonal strife in this bubble of assimilation. Most notable is Domingo’s Delia, who turns in a believably distraught performance as a woman who has lost most of her family to carnage. She starts out simply grumbling about her remaining child’s closeness with the Americans, until a shocking turn in the teenager’s fate pushes her from mildly comedic to harrowingly dramatic, past a point of no return. Garcia as the tragic Leonor, fully believing in the commander’s supposed love for her and for the Philippines, has the most engaging arc of the ensemble.

The cinematography has striking moments, and the pacing and build-up in the narrative are teeming with tension. Lana wears his references on his sleeve, evoking some of the dramatic framing of Ishmael Bernal’s Himala in moments where Sisa stands alone in the sparse landscape. Of course, because he has Koronel’s powerful screen presence at his disposal, the composition of some scenes call back to Brocka’s Insiang, with steady push-ins and pans.

While the Caucasian actors are a weak point in the ensemble, their one-note, almost cartoonish portrayals do kind of match the sense of artifice that veers this film towards saturated, moody landscapes over historical realism. As the aspect ratio widens from a dimly lit chamber scene to an open-air village confrontation, cinematographer Carlo Mendoza and editor Lawrence Ang helping Lana paint this seething rage against colonizing Americans.

However, what it achieves stylistically softens the blow of the film. Instead of being an incisive indictment of imperialism itself, the final act really draws out the theatrics of women scrambling to come together to fight back against oppressors. It’s riveting stuff, executed with a one-take scene that has become Lana’s signature, albeit with clichés here and there, and an ending that doesn’t go all the way. For all the build-up it took, the toned-down bloodshed and mayhem make a sour pairing with the frustrating politics that refuse to grant full revolutionary imagination to the oppressed women.

Akin to Jerrold Tarog’s recently concluded “Bayaniverse” trilogy (Heneral Luna, Goyo, and Quezon), Sisa espouses the rhetoric that we are our own worst enemies, which is understandable given the Philippines’ political milieu today, but a bit tired in historical films that seek to reappraise forgotten parts of our history. This film harkens back beautifully to local cinema classics, with phenomenal acting from its leads being the exact picture of Women’s Month girl power, but it says something about our nation’s view of emancipation that it almost always carries with it a wry note.

In terms of similarity in plot, Lana’s 2013 film Barber’s Tales, which also stars Domingo as a widow who takes her fate into her own hands, has a superior conclusion. It is telling that, over a decade since, the contrast in the depiction of Filipino guerrillas and their undeniable flaws reflects a disillusionment with the traditional notions of resistance.

What amused me most about the screening I was in was an American tourist couple who, for one reason or another, decided to watch this film. As we were all standing up and leaving, the guy chuckled nervously, he and his wife the only white people in a sea of brown, and asked us directly behind him, “so, uh, that’s not a true story, is it?”

We shook our heads no, but it was funny all the same that the film made them nervous. Perhaps it is wishful thinking on Jun Robles Lana’s part — if only it were true that we had a Sisa (or a few of them) to set ablaze the bleak conclusion to that phase of our history, and to wreck and burn the eventual full embrace of Americans that the Philippines pivoted to after the turn of the century. Perhaps I would not be writing this review in English at all, and that tourist couple wouldn’t be here in the first place.

Alas, that is still wishful thinking, and it makes sense that the film — as a revenge thriller or as an ideological study — didn’t have a fully satisfying conclusion. Sisa represents female rage, its place in an imperfect historical memory, and the perceived madness with which women adopt to be able to survive.