So what the mystery behind Room 180?

It’s not often that one is asked to watch a film that essentially exists as a “work in progress,” but that is  exactly the treat I had recently. A project of director Rico Gutierrez, Room  180, I viewed ran for 40 minutes, and as Rico explained, is conceptualized as part one of a diptych that has part two still waiting to be shot. It’s a searing look at relationships at close quarters, and shot in theater style, with the camera panning on a 180-degree axis. There can be close-ups and such, but the intended effect is to have the cinema-goer experience a proscenium-type staging/viewing. It’s like one is in a theater, with binoculars that one can raise and use in instances (read: the close-ups), and the camera work that Rico employs simulates that experience.

The 40 minutes I watched revolved around two men who find themselves in a motel room. Best friends for the longest of times, one man (Earl Ignacio) is outwardly gay, while the other character (TV and film director Andoy Ranay) has just emerged from a disastrous marriage, and seems to be seeking some solace or comfort from the predicament of being in the said room. There are flashbacks to the kind of stunted emotional dynamics that characterized his marriage, and while he professes vehemently that he isn’t after some homosexual experience, there is disbelief etched on the face of Earl’s character as it wasn’t his idea to check into the room. It’s verbal foreplay that stands as the core of the short film, with quite stunning results. Within the 40 minutes, we have quite drastic character development and transformation, with roles of aggressor reversed as the minutes transpire — with both Earl and Andoy providing strong performances. Working from a screenplay by Mike Rivera, one is struck by the very natural dialogue that has been created, and how minute physical movements that become part of the camera work help add to the texture of each character’s persona. It’s like Rico is acting as our guide to the intricate “dance” and ritual of awakening that is happening in the room. The basic theme is one of self-awareness, how oftentimes, it’s interaction of this sort that helps us understand ourselves and helps us define what we really are, stripped of pretense and social conventions.

To be honest, I left the screening curious about how Rico would eventually film part two, and make the two parts an organic whole, or whether what I had already seen would best be served as being further developed, and we meet these same characters in a different context further down the road. Of course, that is second-guessing the intention of Rico and his project. Suffice it to say that the grainy, herky-jerky camera work had one feeling that one was really a fly on the wall of that room, seeing, warts and all, all that was going on between the two protagonists. It’s strong stuff, albeit not the kind of material that may find a general audience, given the very mature nature of the material.