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SHOULD a
film be praised because it soars at the end and touches
or even moves us when it is already at its homestretch?
Can a film ever be considered good if it plods for the
most part, only to recapitulate its elements in haste
toward the end when by that time, the seducing has
become a self-conscious dramatizing?
‘Roxxxane’ is gifted with an ingenious title. It is an
ingenuity that is carried in its very use of high-tech
gadgets that have, it seems, overtaken the day-day-day
conversation in our little communities. The filmmaker
has seen this device as a kind of motif, not on the
surface of the narrative, but as a form. The film thus
is not simply a series of consequential and sequential
frames but one that is told through a screen that splits
and multiplies and breaks and returns again as one whole
frame. Our leading character walks through the space and
soon he is just caught in a rectangular frame, all the
other scenes around him obliterated. Between him and his
next steps are black fields, spaces with no movement and
no acting.
 There
are many more examples: a community is presented not as
a whole but as a collection of boxed characters. A
neighborhood is spliced, gestures are focused on as if
in exhibits, objects are set aside within a small frame.
The entire styling, if you wish to call this styling,
reminds you of a handheld camera with its properties of
jarring and shaking fully articulated and even
exaggerated. Think ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and, more
recently, ‘Cloverfield.’ In those filmic outings, the
camera is purposely made to move with such abandon that
we are forewarned of its immediate effect on our viewing
comfort. In the case of ‘Blair Witch’, the impact is
horrifying, as it brings us within the horror and not
outside awaiting it or viewing it. In the case of ‘Cloverfield’,
the approach becomes enervating even as it makes the
story of an alien attack seems like a fun chase scene.
There
are no jarring movements in ‘Roxxxane’, but only this
steady, quiet gaze. Generally undisturbed, this gaze
receives its movement from a frame that is eternally
attacked by the desire to reproduce the frames,
alliterate them, explore them for what they really are:
a blank space waiting for actors to people them. On our
part, as audience, we watch these actors and listen not
to their story but the story being told with their
characters. Sometimes, we do step back when we realize
that the actors are really doing their darndest best.
Most of the time, as in good films, we, like Pauline
Kael, lost it.
In ‘Roxxxane’,
I was also lost. Not in the movie but in its
presentation that, at a certain point, almost looks like
a Powerpoint presentation. There’s nothing wrong with
this program. I like Powerpoint and use it a lot to
explain, most of the time to death, a lecture. But I do
not want my film to be a lecture. I do not want a full
articulation. I like the metaphor, bit. And Jun Lana,
the filmmaker behind ‘Roxxxane’, is one person who knows
the power of a metaphor, especially when it is rendered
in one consistent, flowing, blooming thread. I recall
his work as a writer in Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s ‘Sa Pusod
Ng Dagat’. Not popular among critics, the film, I
believe, is a marvel to watch with its unblinking use of
enchantment and loss in the image of the siren placed
against extreme poverty that is ever present.
‘Roxxxane’ seduces us with the metaphor of technology.
It is a powerful premise: the cell phone with its
capacity to connect people is now alienating everyone
with its small frame. I imagine the filmmaker wants to
use this parallelism of our world seemingly made bigger,
but in reality collapsed in that tiny body of a device.
For a while the style works: scenes after scenes are
happening all over. We are interconnected and yet the
interconnectedness is not welcome. Like the many frames
materializing onscreen, real events without
discrimination are happening, too. I agree to this
premise of hyperrealism. As this goes, on, however, we
begin to feel that objects and processes and emotions
are being proffered to us. We are no more the audience,
but hapless victims of an overly solicitous storyteller
cramming in a small space too many details, too many
footnotes, too many references.
Elizabeth Oropesa as the mother does not simply look.
The frame insists that we see what she sees: an
underwear on the ground, an accessory, etc. This and
many other scenes are not articulations but insidious
underscoring. For a film that plays around the allure of
the forbidden and the intimate and the insinuated,
Roxxxane begins with ellipses but, for the most part,
opts for the declarative and imperative.
Slow as
the beginning of the film may be, I thought it to be a
charming opening, with us being led into this simple
world of individuals growing up and trying to survive.
The neighborhood of ‘Roxxxane’ may lack the verite of
previous interpretations of the Metro Manila urban
poor/lower-middle class (think Brocka and Jeturian) but
it is a proper quiet before the storm.
The film
goes into many stories and its adventurous storytelling,
at points, is novel and intriguing. ‘Roxxxane’ fails,
though, when it fuses form and content: the distracting
mobile phone and the narrative it inspires become just
that, distracting. It succeeds when it briskly throws
away the device and picks up the riveting theme where it
matters most—by the heart. After all, the story is
really about growing up. Credit goes to Lana, the writer
and also the producer and the director, for seizing the
current theme of technology and making it sensual and
dark. Credit should also go to this young actor, Jay
Aquitania. All innocent, Aquitania’s face belies the
dangers that our young boys and girls face in a world
where the line between play and perversion is blurred,
and where the private moves into the public with such
seamless violence. There is no need for anyone to die at
the end. A boy growing up disturbed, a young woman
violated without her knowing it, and a neighborhood
having fun with all of these are all forms of deaths.
Belated as it may seem, Jay Aquitania’s “death” at the
very end of the film, is one little poem this promising
actor offers. |
