ON a scale of one to 10, I’ve already told many of my friends that I rate the film Kita Kita an 11 for its likability. Perhaps that rating is a tad exaggerated, but I’m making a point. Here is a film with two actors bearing the burden—or the lightness—of the story and doing that with such aplomb and ease.
There are weaknesses in the film all right. In fact, for cineastes, the film is highly referential. The story of an ordinary-looking guy falling for a lovely girl has been told many times. There is Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. And we have our own underrated Chiquito, who made the loser’s or clown’s role such an exercise in lament and great art.
There’s also the structure of the film that brings the story to a sudden climax and end (I’m trying hard to avoid spoilers as much as I can), only for the narrative to start all over again with a long flashback. The director, Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, gambled on this terrible form but, praise the spirits of great fiction, won the bet. There are reasons, and we soon will go into that.
I haven’t seen a Filipino film for quite a while where the smile on my face remained pasted after I had stepped out of the theater and gone home.
When I began to write this review, I wanted to spill out the bad news first before my euphoria. Well, here are my regrets as I step back and look again at the film. I thus ask this question: What’s wrong with the film?
What seems like a happy beginning turns bitter, then sweet and sad toward the end. The culprit is this system in our society that tells us the regular guy, the homely person cannot ever succeed in relationship. For all the lack of convention the signposts of the film appear to point to and follow, in fact, in the end it decides to drop the emotional rebellion to concede to conventions. When all the while I was thinking here’s a film that was going to break old rules, it opts for a resolution where the beauty of a woman is measured in terms of good looks and not a good heart. Here we are rooting for the man who once was a loser, only for the storyteller to snap the hope out of us. The man can’t be happy. The woman, lovely as she is, can never love that man.
What Kita Kita attempts to subvert at the core of its first chapter, it finally celebrates. The cliché wins. The regular guys doesn’t lose in the game of life but is made to lose it.
Now that being out of my chest, let me dwell on the magic and charm of this small film. If we’re to take the news releases, the film with a budget of P10 million supposedly raked in more than 90 million not long after its opening. As of this writing, it has reportedly already earned more than P200 million.
The box-office lesson is this: an old plot that shifts in the middle and is not heavily contrived can be a source of viewing pleasure. A performance that is not cloying, maudlin and inept can attract audiences. And the greatest lesson—because it’s quite new—is this: take two performances scented by sincerity, and that’s all that is needed for great and entertaining art to take place.
Running the film is Bernardo, the director, who offers a pacing that uses all the possible rhythms available. She engineers the movement of the scenes in such a way that we look forward to the two characters waking up, meeting, exchanging witty repartee or simply ambling through the park. She employs this pattern and slowly pulls us into the respective lives of Tonyo and Lea.
Lea is a Filipina working as a tour guide in Sapporo. She has a boyfriend, who asks her to marry him, only for the man to ask for a postponement. Lea would discover the reason for the quick and odd change of heart of the Japanese boyfriend. She meets Tonyo. Lea mistakes the young, unkempt man as homeless person. We would see Lea and Tonyo meet again (I have twisted the timeline of the story) and, this time, with the two of them in a different situation. Lea is afflicted with temporary blindness. She doesn’t see this man who brings her Filipino food everyday.
A series of repetitions, a charming device in fairy tales, enchants us also repeatedly. A bell in the park is rung twice, and each time we see altered emotions. Tonyo bringing food and Lea snubbing the offering and, one day, Lea sensing Tonyo‘s absence makes us feel she’s looking for him. The unexpected joy at the end of each repeated event is born not out of surprise but from anticipation.
At the heart of the story of Kita Kita are two actors hitherto undiscovered for their genius in a potent brew of comedy and tragedy. As Tonyo, Empoy Marquez shows us the ancient truth about great comedians: a laughter that hides the most heartbreaking capacity to care and love. Lea is played by Alessandra de Rossi, an actor noted for plumbing deep in her soul the rawest of emotion. Here she is devoid of angst as an OFW going through pains with a personality that is all polka dots and moonbeams.
Who decided on this casting? If the chemistry of a team is put into a competition, this tandem of Alessandra de Rossi and Empoy Marquez wins hands down. Both seem to have been born into the roles. Empoy, not the biggest comedian in the country, doesn’t make faces. If he does, they’re so subtle they mark him as a dramatic actor with a flair for restraint and a light touch. As the character with all the smart-alecky remarks, Empoy makes us tear every now and then. He looks at Lea and all the camera catches is this innocence, this humor and this happiness threatening to break into failures.
Alessandra de Rossi should be the template for the romcoms that abound and make our lives bland. As Lea, she doesn’t reach out for the cutesy poses because she knows (as she acts out) that the story is already clutching our winsome hearts. Alessandre de Rossi is so marvelous in her role of a lovely woman who may never attain happiness for some strange reasons that her pains make us truly smile.
The untapped talent of de Rossi and Marquez is seen in all the scenes they share. As with all unforgettable movies, there’s one scene that demonstrates for us the artistry of Empoy Marquez and Alessandra de Rossi: the ramen scene. The comments from Tonyo freeze the action of Lea. In a lesser actor, there would have been a twisted face from Alessandra de Rossi. But she remains immobile because it is Empoy Marquez who would slightly raise his brow, a skewed combination that assures laughter and bliss.
It’s quite bigoted to say this but, as the story progresses, Marquez as Tonyo slowly transforms into strapping man. In that scene where Lea regains her vision, Alessandra de Rossi stares at Empoy Marquez across the street. Without a doubt, we see not a curiosity in those wondrous eyes of Lea but an openness, a gentle curiosity bereft of any judgment. Perhaps, my Marxist-critic friends are correct to say that in a capitalist enterprise, the laborer is always devalued. Still, it’s with regret the filmmakers never gave Lea and Empoy, these two friends or lovers or kindred souls, a chance.
I look forward to more films from Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, fun and fantastic films that would make us rethink our politics and arts, films where characters are not caricatures and actors are allowed to tap honesty, humanity and artistry
I look forward to Empoy Marquez doing more lead and serious roles because, to assure fans, he will always bring his own brand of comedy to any Everyman he portrays.
As for Alessandra de Rossi, she has nothing to prove anymore. She has always been the “next great actress” and, for this role, she reclaims that label. I like to see her in more light and fun roles because I want her to rescue the genre of romance and adventure from the fakery that infects those films
As for the producers, and Piolo Pascual’s name has cropped up as being among them, you can start counting the millions, but don’t forget you owe the public more good films.
1 comment
Wonderful review! On point and insightful!