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Orlando
Nadres shall be not turning in his grave: the film
version of his tour de force confession succeeds where
the scenes articulated come from his play and fails
miserably where the film director took the liberty of
fleshing out those ellipses in between the scenes of the
original one-act play. Not all is bad, though. Insofar
as bringing to the big screen the story by way of the
play a generation has known, Lino Tañada has
accomplished what the play—in its best nights, and the
actors in their best performances—did: to touch those
who saw in Hanggang Dito Na Lamang Maraming Salamat
not a gay play but a lament against our society’s
loudest silence on its self-imposed cruelty on a taboo
it upholds and denies.
There
are many questions outside of the play and the movie
made after it. Why only now? Movies with gay themes have
never really been marginalized in this country and for
those who have read the play by Nadres, they all say
that the theater piece with many short scenes is a piece
screaming for transformation into a screenplay and film.
The play is a headache for stage managers and production
managers who have to be magicians in handling the quick
shifts of scenes. It is also a tedious exercise for
actors who must be agile enough to change their moods
quickly. These rapid movements from one place to
another, of course, can be handled by cinema with its
fully developed function of editing. A problem for
theater becomes a tremendous possibility for cinema.
Tañada
must have sensed this cinematic quality of the play. The
only problem for him at the start, I imagine, was to
decide which scenes that were talked about in the play
were going to be explained in the film. Which scenes in
the play that ended in lights fading must now come forth
brilliantly extended? To extend some scenes literally
bracketed in darkness is to downright diminish the
mystery for which those shadows are made to illumine.
The arrival/addition of other characters in a work that
is really about departures is what unhinges the film.
Let me say this, however: One does not need to know the
play or to see it to appreciate the film. It just
happens that there is a play and it is in the
consciousness of many people.
The film
shows us Efren, the young man, with his friends. These
barkadas take up so much space that we wonder if
they serve as a chorus or something. If they are a
chorus, their explanations are redundant and not
articulate enough. Besides, there is no need for
commentaries, for these are more than provided by two
thespians acting twice over. Julie is the first, the
flamboyant gay who acts out fantastic after fantastic
scenes when addressing the topic of gayness for him and
repression for his friend. Fidel is also there, a true
thespian because he portrays a role that society demands
he maintains at the same time that it requires him to
keep desire resolutely hidden behind avuncular affection
and concern.
The
worst addition in the film is the girlfriend. Implied in
the play, the character is now imbued with motivations
and lines that we have seen uttered in many films that
are historically known now as “bold” movies. There is
even a greater crisis with this unnecessary additive.
The relationship with the girl stands for everything
that is heterosexual, dominant and acceptable. It does
not matter that they are already “doing it” outside of
marriage. The scene has a seal of approval all over it.
The girl says once they are married, her father will
give the boy a permanent job. If the film is a salute to
one of the first Filipino plays to deal with the
homosexual theme, then the extended scene with the
girlfriend is a thematic stab on the back. That addition
subverts the play and the film, which to me represents
the most articulate and colorful pleading with regard to
gender discrimination and misunderstanding in this land.
Not that homosexuality is a case that needs pleading.
Not
everything is wrong in Hanggang Dito Na Lamang.
The magic of the film begins with the young man
traveling back to San Ildefonso, the scene cutting to
the tender current of anticipation etched on the sad
face of an uncle who raised him and now loves and
desires him. While the lines of Julie may sound dated
already, the scenes of the beauty-parlor owner with
Fidel prepare us for the downward spiraling of their
fate in this miniversion of a grand tragedy in the
making.
Friends,
most of them closet critics, have already written me
their complaints about the actor who plays Efren, the
“adopted” son of the town soltero, Fidel. Press
releases say the director discovered him in a small
Quezon town. Perhaps people have not recognized this but
the film takes most of its scenes from events that
transpired in the late ’70s. Even then, the character of
Efren already challenged directors. The young man must
embody the naiveté of a probinsyano and even if
he has already experienced gay sex, he must still bear
that pure aura that borders almost on the dumb and the
inept. He also must recognize the value of gratitude.
Bembol Roco, Jigs Recto reminded me, was the first Efren.
Being a good actor, he was able to help us suspend our
disbelief. In all of his scenes with his “uncle,” Jerwin
Mercado’s Efren does serve the purpose of the play. He
is not a good actor but at the end, you believe he is
the kind of man who would come back and say goodbye to
his “uncle” despite the revelation, a young man waiting
to be waylaid every now and then. Jigs Recto, who was
the production manager when Nadres staged his own play,
reminded me about the director-playwright’s obsession
with Blanche DuBois, thus the giggly footnote to those
characters of sweet dementia.
If the
film falters terribly at the beginning, during the last
30 minutes or so it shakes through the range of emotions
extending beyond Z. The referential and derivative
mechanics of the play now put into full use, Hanggang
Dito Na Lamang seems to be buffeted on all sides by
the melodrama of the ’50s, the lyricism of memory
carrying the story aloft as it reveals its true self:
Gay. Fantastic. Fabulous.
As
Julie, Jon Santos is a hag in the pleasant disguise of a
clown. He is all illusion and trickery, sadness and
bitterness in long gown and with a crown for good
measure. For fans who love long dialogues, Jon Santos
will never fail them as he channels in drag the poses
and dolor of Lolita Rodriguez and Marlene Dauden. Never
a fan of Filipino stage actors going into cinema, I have
to admit Nonie Buencamino is one scrumptious yet
disturbing oratorio in this film; subtle bit by subtle
bit, he lets us inside those buttoned-down shirt to
reveal a heart so pink and human. Not even the silly
pink balloon released can overtake the grief he has
tremendously released earlier. |
