12.28.06 kulturnatib

Ligalig

I don't follow Tagalog movies much. From experience, I have found them to be a waste of time and money. There are, of course, exceptions. But these have been few and far between. I have been told though that the independent, alternative and digital film scene has become vibrant in the past few years. Proof of this is the slew of (necessarily small) productions, festivals, and awards and recognition garnered by these that have made it to the international film fest circuit.

Cesar Montano is a name that is bruited about as among the new film makers who are invigorating the steadily growing moribund local film industry. He is, of course, an actor first and foremost. And he is not the first to cross over from being in front of the camera to getting behind it, but perhaps, the first to garner a major award with a first attempt. In 2004, he won best director award in the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) with his movie, “Panaghoy sa Suba.”

For this year's MIFF Montano once more has an entry. “Ligalig,” is a movie that tries to, looks like it is trying to put an MTV, digital edge and a straightforward psychological, crime thriller together. The result, however, is like barako coffee with sour cream dressing. It leaves one with an indescribable taste in the mouth and a determination not to try it again.

A friend, like many female friends who frankly admit to being taken by Montano's good, 'matinee idol' looks, badgered me into watching this movie. Both of us have seen a Montano movie before, but with opposite impressions. She saw “Bagong Buwan,” and considered Montano to be excellent in that movie. I saw “Panaghoy” and thought the movie to fall short of its ambitions. But, we both agreed that the movie poster for this latest Montano was intriguing and well-done.

“I like it already,” she said with the first minutes into the movie that featured solarized close-ups, gritty and soft-focus scenery, edgy title and credits work and gothic-rock soundtracks. I agreed.

Then the movie moves on to what clearly looks like green-mask technique where a foreground action gets superimposed on a background thats supposed to look like a complete scenery. In this case, it is Montano supposedly in a cab – he is a cabbie – driving through Metro Manila though it is impossible to tell just where.

And, in what is a dead give-away, Montano drives like nobody drives in a vehicle that is moving. He holds the steering wheel steadily in zero position. Even a child driving a toy car knows that anything that is moving will always have a small left-right, maybe even up-down play. But, Montano is oblivious to this even while his cab is supposed to be turning as can be seen from the moving background.

But the worse is still to come.

There are characters that are developed only within what's possible in half a sheet of tissue paper, there are scenes that are so gratuitously expected – Katya Santos is so voluptuous that an outdoor shower scene where the camera crawls up and down her glistening body is as expected as fat on pork adobo – there are the police who go about sleep-walking like in their investigation that, in the end, still results in a solution to the crime and there is the action-rooted Montano who has to sneak in an action sequence that leaves one's head in a spin dryer.

This is a technique driven film. And the techniques are that of digital editing and animation. Substance wise it attempts at a montage. But, it is still clearly motivated by the realities of the box-office so there has to be some kind of story behind all that.

Here, the movie fails miserably. One has to look for the story behind or beyond the movie. One has to find it in one's brain, not imagination. Imagination cannot work in a vacuum. Imagination has to work on something.

Here, there is nothing. Or, actually, there are too many things – the bane of Tagalog movies – that amount to nothing.

Box-office wise it doesn't even look promising. There were a total of six other people in the whole theater with us, a day into the festival, who were clueless or simply, perhaps, like us, didn't have enough brains to remember that the old saying about not judging a book by its cover actually meant something.