Three characters stand in the middle of a small space, a hut behind them and the woods before them. These three individuals will not leave the circle, the territory, marked by a light that makes the space seems infinite, because one doesn’t see its boundaries. Every now and then, the sound of gunfire echoes from afar. Dogs bay and howl determining other spaces that these persons perhaps perceive or just imagine.
Welcome to the ideologies and romance of Jun Lana. In this film, titled Anino sa Likod ng Buwan (Shadow Behind the Moon), Lana, who wrote and directed the film, explores the politics of the countryside, where militarization has pushed people out of their homes and into settlements.
The “rebels,” for that is how we still call them, remain in the periphery, out there in the dense forests or in uncharted farms. Every now and then, one of them is caught by the military and pieces of information filter into the army camps; otherwise, there seems to be no reason for soldiers to stay in these villages. The military retains a duplicity that appears to work in its favor.
Who was it that said all it takes for a piece of theater to happen is to have a space, and allow a person to walk through that space while another person watches? In Anino, Lana places three characters in a small lighted space, with us watching and theater and cinema get engaged. For Anino breaches any concept of what is theatrical and cinematic, and situates in the fusion a story that packs metaphors and metonyms, psychology and politics, with the density and mystery of a confession and a public condemnation.
The film opens with Emma bathing in the dark, save for a sliver of light outlining her figure. She wraps herself up and walks, her frame seen through dry twigs and branches. The camera stalks her like a rapist about to jump and ravage her. She reaches the shack where she lives with Nando. Joel, an armyman, is with them. Joel has struck a friendship with this couple. We feel both the comfort and unease these three people feel with each other.
The military man appears to be safe with them, deep in the Marag valley. Talks of counterinsurgency and sexuality penetrate this circle. The armyman taking a leak is surprised by the husband of the young woman. They talk about size of penises. The wife joins in the conversation, reminding the military how she approached him once while he was also urinating and how she saw his penis.
Candor and malice suffuse the homoerotica of the banter. Somehow, the three persons are not limiting the exchange to sexual display; they are also on their way to stripping their selves to show something deep, and dark and unexpected
Something does happen: When Nando leaves to fetch water and Joel and Emma are left in the house, and they grab each other. What follows is a most graphic sex scene even without genital exposure. We are voyeurs, accomplices and moral arbiters watching Joel and Emma experiencing the most satisfying of sexual bouts. The moon does not look over these two lovers, as there is no space for love between these two bodies. The windows of the house remain open, and we fear for the two being caught. And yet, we are also excited by the thought that Nando may just be in the darkness, waiting for the right time to catch the two and kill them, pure cheats and not star-crossed lovers.
And yet, the night—and here the romantic elements of the story surge—holds a far deeper secret.
Nando comes back to the house. We discover that they are not real husband and wife. And yet, Nando cares for Emma. And yet, Nando asks why Emma doesn’t seem to care for him. The two reach a decision to leave the house. Someone is waiting for them out in the woods. Joel comes back, and tells Nando and Emma he knows who they are. Joel also tells them he knows the man waiting for them outside. Joel, in fact, has added to his collection of teeth the tooth of Andres, the man who is on assignation with Nando and Emma.
If Anino was a story of a love triangle, the film would plunder our sensibility with its amorality. But the plot of Anino on lust and love hides behind the light and shadow of individuals who do not subject their life to destinies but to the more convoluted system of political expediency set against personal psychology and desires.
The three characters—Joel, Nando and Emma—must be among the most webbed minds in the Philippine cinema. This is the function of the screenplay and direction of Jun Lana, imbuing the characters with the palpable capacity to write their own life, risk that life with decisions that are instinctive now and judicious next. And find an angle to wrestle with the conflicts they have created in the process of living that life.
The direction of Lana has provided the three actors—Luis Alandy, Anthony Falcon and LJ Reyes—with the scenario to tell the story of their characters.
As Nando, Anthony Falcon, has once more grittily reminded us how underrated he remains as an actor. In Loy Arcenas’s Requieme, he is the transvestite; in Joel Lamangan’s Violator, he is the hot policeman making love as if there’s no crime happening in this world. In Anino, Falcon is Nando, almost tubercular and unattractive, and who has started wearing his ideology on his sleeve because he can’t wear his heart out. When he does open his feelings for Emma, Nando checks it against the very purpose of his being there in the hut with the woman and the military man.
Alandy does a convincing turn as Joel, the military man who is extra solicitous to the impoverished couple. He pilfers food from the military ration to share with Nando and Emma. As the camera turns around and around him, repeating the nearly circular light surrounded by darkness, we spy a face that shifts with the available light, a glint and a glare that convince and seduce. In Alandy can be accessed the two-faced nature of the military man. He descends upon the community with the strength of an occupier and, the next day, the gentility of a social worker. Alandy packs in a highly taut and sensual body ultimately the power of the military to subjugate the female body and the gaze of the male who longs for the male. In an extended sex scene with Reyes as Emma, Alandy does not disappoint at all with each thrust that could have been nurtured by a dominant sexuality.
Reyes is Emma, the woman caught between what Joel protects openly and Nando hides. When she gives in to her libido, her Emma satisfies the prurient in the viewer. But if Nando has reason for staying long so Joel and Emma could satisfy their urges, Emma has just cause for using her body, and that awakens the subversive in us. Alternating between a woman terribly in love with one and instinctively protective of the other, Reyes sweeps the screen with her voluptuousness and vulnerability. As we scorn her for being a woman lured and made weak by carnality, we find a person principled to the point of recklessness. She is female and feral.
Anino sa Likod ng Buwan brilliantly uses the shadow of love to lure us into the light of political folk tales.
The film is nominated in the Gawad Urian for Best Picture, Direction, Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing and Sound. Falcon and Luis Alandy are nominated for Best Actor, while Reyes is nominated for Best Actress.