Tale of a battered wife & the revenge of a page turner

MANILA, Philippines - Film reviews: The Page Turner and Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe

The week’s most provocative film is Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe written and directed by Alvin Yapan who takes another intriguing look at violence as inflicted on women by sado-machistic husbands.

Portraying the title role is Irma Adlawan who is more than equipped for the part of the battered wife and whose abusive husband played by Nonie Buencamino plumbed the part with as much depth in this film.

As the film progresses, poor wife seeks refuge from a former suitor, TJ Trinidad, who turns out to be impotent.

The film takes a mysterious turn as baskets of black fruits mysteriously appear at the doorstep of the wife. Initially, she mistook it as a reconciliatory gesture from an abusive husband who begins to suspect that his wife is entertaining a lover.

Under this condition, could the battered wife be just simply imagining a lover as her way out? As for the husband played with evil design by Buencamino, the director went as far as to portray beastiality to complete the portrait of the violent husband as totally depraved?

The film tackles local folklore about women subjected to abuse by nocturnal creatures namely the tikbalang which to some extent has created more questions than the film can answer.

To be sure, the film can pass for a poetic and allegorical narrative on a woman’s will to survive violence right in her own home. It — in fact — succeeds in portraying the other subtle forms of “rape” and/or violence inflicted on a woman. But by mixing reality with underworld mythological character, the film loses narrative focus and the allegory has a hard time taking off.

But the film is another good look at domestic violence and the writer-director brilliantly leads us into its unsavory social repercussion. For this alone, Ang Panggagahasa is still a worthy film endeavor.

Can the experience — of not being accepted in a music school because of a piano teacher’s lukewarm attitude towards a talent — constitute “violence” likely to affect a promising musician?

This question is explored in the French film The Page Turner beautifully directed by Denis Dercourt. For the non-musicians, a page turner is the one seated beside the pianist turning pages of a music score during a chamber music concert. The thing about a page turner is that she can make or unmake a concert if he or she so much as delay the turning of the pages or worse, turn the wrong page thus derailing the pianist.

Playing the title role is Deborah Francois who plays Melanie, the small-town butcher’s daughter whose ambition to become a pianist is sidetracked by a small but crucial incident of a piano teacher Ariane Fouchecourt (played by Catherine Frot) obliging to sign autograph during the audition thus distracting the pianist.

Many years later, Melanie finds herself as governess to the teenage son of the pianist after her stint in a law firm owned by the pianist’s husband played by Pascal Greggory.

Here the film as a suspenseful psychological drama unfolds when the page turner becomes indispensable to the pianist who is making a major comeback. In one intriguing scene after another, the page turner didn’t show up in the big concert after succeeding in getting into the pianist’s inner confidence; she even coaches the pianist’s son to play a faster tempo of a Bach piece thus resulting in tendonities for the poor boy. The page turner appears infatuated by the pianist who reciprocates with an autograph and an open declaration of lesbian love.

Poor husband discovers the autographed picture with the wife’s love note to the page turner. There is shock on the part of the husband and poor pianist-wife faints after discovering illicit love encouraged by the page turner.

Dercourt’s film is by far a suspenseful psychological drama which is reminiscent of the style of Hitchcock or an early Chabrol.

The lesson here is that you don’t mess up with the future of promising musicians. They will come back in your household in other capacities as ogres masquerading as page turners.