PERHAPS very few people would agree that Rocco Nacino is a good actor. I have seen him in Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa where, I believe, he delivered a more textured portrayal than Paulo Avelino. I also insist that physically, Nacino has a mobile face that does not insult close-up shots. Those qualities, however, if I may be allowed by some of my co-jurors in the Sinag-Maynila Film Festival, were the basis of discussion on the film Balut Contry, where Nacino played the lead.
Nacino plays Jun, a musician, who visits the farm he inherited from his father. In the town, he gets to know the family that minds the farm. Jun really never grew up in that place and never had a warm relationship with his father. As he does not know anything about duck-raising and farming, he goes to the farm because he plans to sell it.
Over the few days that Jun spends there observing how ducks are raised, and how the eggs are gathered, he befriends the two children in the family. Jun even stays with the two children when an emergency case has to be attended to by the parents.
I describe the plot of the film as laidback, and therein lies the main problem. The action never rises, and there are no extraordinary events in the film—even when a man steals the duck eggs. The role played by Nacino suffers the same travails: he is never given scenes to chew on. In the language of movie writers, the role is not challenging enough.
This nearly plodding movement of the film, however, is the one that makes me like the film. In duck farms, days go by without drama. Paul Sta. Ana captures the slow rhythm of the farm. There is no hysteria in the small hut and this makes the film fascinatingly sincere. In rural areas, men, women and children are tougher. These are not the “poor” folks that telenovelas define as over the top and at the edge of collective nervous breakdown. It is painful at a certain point to look at the family as they stand and work there, with their fate in the hands of a landowner. There is no pathos in the event; what we are regaled with is the narrative of economics taking over.
Interestingly, what most critics find lacking in the film is what I feel to be the power to reckon with in the same work: the quiet, everyday intensity of Nacino’s Jun. He is affected by a relationship. There is a wedding that is not about to materialize. To relocate and search for good fortune abroad is in the mind. To sell the farm is a possibility and a closure. Nacino does not underscore these personal crisis bur rather embodies them quietly as he walks through what could be a long journey to his self.
The contour of the plot is the foundation for Nacino’s acting. There is an earnestness on that face. Written into the role, Jun as played by Nacino is neither existential nor transcendental. Nacino plays this with a mixture of machismo and romance.
Sta. Ana directs Balut Country, which, happily did not become a socio-economic profile of an industry. Rona Lean Sales is credited for the screenplay with the director.
The Candaba swamp, in the meantime, waits to be used as a metaphor for all kinds of journeys. But that is a different review altogether.
The film Bambanti arrests your eyes even before your ears have heard the story.
For all its flaws, the film cannot be ignored. In the last Sinag Maynila film festival, we had a long discussion about why the film worked or did not work. At the center of the contention was the figure of the scarecrow—the bambanti.
For the story to move, the scarecrow had to work.
Explicitly, I shared with the jury my feeling toward the movie—that I love it until a certain point of the film.
The small plot about children living in the farm and connected only to the big town because of relatives has a charm all of its own. Had it stayed in that narrative and worked its way through the lyricism of the surroundings, I would have been happy already. But the narrative went further to conjure a cautionary tale about honesty, idealism and emotional manipulation.
A watch goes missing; a boy becomes suspect; the clan goes berserk in all directions; a barangay head intervenes but he is a kinsman as all village chiefs are; a healer/shaman intervenes and divines the identity of the theft. The timeline of destiny is remarkably engaging and original up to this time—until a revelation at the end is whipped out, without rhyme or reason.
Before the prosaic solution is offered, Bambanti follows the life of a widow taking care of her two children. The carabao goes missing and the search brings the mother and boy to the darkest corner of the ricefield. A grandmother lives with them and offers her wisdom to the two grandchildren. Witnessing this slice of rural life in the vast yellow field of Isabela are the scarecrows that mark the space.
The film Bambanti ends with a bang—the boy Popoy is the star of a street dance which has become the bane of a forced and imposed cultural reawakening in every town that has one product to market. A fabulous fireworks display punctuates the unrealized cautionary tale. Then I start missing the whisper that the story at first promised, the gentle poetry about the simplicity, even the naïveté of rural people.
A superb acting ensemble graces Bambanti. The little boy who plays Popoy is a discovery. His name is Micko Laurente. Alessandra de Rossi is Belyn, a mother whose principle is caught between rage and self-pity. When Belyn stones the home of her well-to-do brother-in-law, we remember the notion of everyday resistance.
In the end, however, we have to contend with the scarecrow, both as a metaphor and as a physical presence. In the end, the scarecrows scare no bird and are even ignored by boys who are accused of stealing golden watches. In the end, there seem to be no scarecrows.
Zig Dulay wrote the screenplay of Bambanti and directed it.