Dark Horse

Filipino Director Crowned The Best At Cannes

By Dino Maragay

MANILA, Philippines – Brillante Mendoza, director of the graphic crime shocker “Kinatay,” annexed the Best Director Award at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival.
“Kinatay” is the Philippines’ entry to the annual film festival.

A report from The Associated Press earlier described the Filipino film as something that “takes viewers on a nerve-rattling road trip from the bustling streets of Manila to an isolated house of horrors.”

"This is not just entertainment, these kinds of stories are real," Mendoza said of his film.

The Palme d'Or Award, the festival's top prize, went to Austrian film "The White Ribbon" by Michael Hanek.

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Film Review: Kinatay (Slaughtered)

By Maggie Lee, May 17, 2009 10:39 ET

Bottom Line: A prurient and excruciating viewing experience that makes the audience partners in crimes of inhumanity.

CANNES -- Festival darling Brillante Mendoza's "Kinatay" is a long night's journey into the Philippine underworld of casual corruption and nauseating cruelty, seen through the eyes of a greenhorn police cadet. Featuring shooting violence, rape and mutilation extensively in real time, from camera angles that make the audience feel like they are watching a snuff film, this full-on experience of forced voyeurism is certain to incite strong (most probably offended) responses.

The deliberately rough-hewn art direction adds to the blunt force of Mendoza's moral outrage, but it won't help "Kinatay" (which means 'slaughter' in Tagalog) make a killing in theatrical business. Unlike such other Mendoza works as "Foster Child" or "Serbis," which capture with warmth or exotic social phenomena distinctive to the Philippines, "Kinatay's" sketchy slice of crime world nastiness can be found anywhere. This makes it a hard sell even to art houses, as their target audience often looks for stronger cultural flavor.

Newly married Peping, who attends the police academy, receives an offer via text message to make a fast buck with a shady friend. By nightfall, he is in a van with a group of vicious gangsters who have kidnapped a bar hostess to demand a loan repayment under orders from an elusive general. From then on, Mendoza switches from the 35mm used for daytime scenes to HD, wrapping all the action in a deliberately ugly, sooty hood of near darkness.

The real time pacing, feels like being stuck in a traffic jam, but the dramatic thrust is relentless as one hears through the muffled darkness, the woman being gagged and beaten mercilessly. The horror escalates to rape, murder and dismemberment. None of this is left to the imagination, with the men's verbal sexism being equally distasteful.

With the artistic choices he has made, Mendoza achieves a singularity of purpose in hammering home his message, and the experience compels one to watch even as one wishes to turn away. He deplores this human treachery with almost Old School, religious morality. He preaches it unequivocally -- at the climax of the slaughter, the subtitles "If you lose your integrity once, you lose it forever" appear.

Laying on the Christian symbolism, the woman is called Madonna, while the camera occasionally cuts away to a picture of Jesus on the wall. She keeps screaming she has a child, which new father Peping is supposed to sympathize with.

The irony that Peping has a vocation in law-enforcement cannot be missed.

The camera regularly pauses on some sideway or other odd-angled closeup of his anguished, conscience-stricken face, accompanied by a twangy score that sounds common to horror flicks, implying that these are turning points where he could have stood up to them, or at least walked away. Images of him standing in an empty carpark, brooding inside a public toilet or stranded in screeching traffic symbolize he is at a moral crossroads or labyrinth.

Festival de Cannes -- Competition

Sales: The Match Factory

Production company: Swift Prods.

Cast: Coco Martin, Julio Diaz, Maria Isabel Lopez, Mercedes Cabral

Director: Brillante Mendoza

Screenwriter: Armando Lao

Producer: Rodel Nacianesco

Executive producer: Didier Costet

Director of photography: Odyssey Flores

Production designer: Dante Mendoza

Music: Teresa Barrozo

Editor: Kats Serraon

No rating, 116 minutes

He Calls It Satire... I Call It Malign

At War At Home

27 March 2009

Published in HK Magazine

The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.

But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.

Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.

Oh yes. The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher.

Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout “China, Madam/Sir” loudly whenever they hear the word “Spratly.” They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, “Long live Chairman Mao!” at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure if that’s going a bit too far, at least for the time being.

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Wikipedia

To Kit (born August 17, 1958) is the pseudonym of Chip Tsao, a Hong Kong-based columnist-broadcaster and published books author. As a broadcaster, he is famous for his wry sense of humor and sarcasm. His writings abound with metaphors, and his best works are notable for their poetical quality.

A Hero’s Last Night

He leans by the window of their one-room house as he runs his fingers across his curly hair, anxiously watching the moonless summer night outside. The lighted candle by the table casts wavering shadows upon his sullen face. Once in a while, it splutters as another fearless moth succumbs to temptation to the deceiving heartless beauty of the scorching flame.

The children are growing up and soon be going to school. The price of fuel has gone up again. Soon, everything follows. The measly monthly pay he takes as a construction foreman would no longer be able to keep up the family needs. He needs to go.

Just as his mind drifts into thoughts of guilt and self-pity, two delicate arms embrace him gently from behind, rubbing the sinewy muscles of his torso ripped by years of hard work. He turns around and smiles at her, as she presses her head close to his chest. Gently, he raises her head and gazes into her soulful eyes. His only love and passion. His strength and his weakness. His world. All rolled into this woman he calls wife. Soon he will be missing these sweetest charming features.

As he brushes the wisps of hair off her face, tears well in her eyes expressing a million unspoken meanings. His heart skips a beat. He follows her as she leads him into the bedroom.

The children are already asleep.

For the last time, they fill the sweltering night with fiery love and passion, as the candle flame licks the very last hot melting tallow to the insane melody of the crickets.

Fin.