Small-town settings & filmic wonders

We went on a back-to-back screening of two films last week which while different shared a love for small settings and their people. Gil Portes’ Bayang Magiliw (from Bayan ng Magiliw) is just one of the many small town films Portes has directed, among them Mulanay, Homecoming, Huwag Kang Kikibo, Miguel/Michelle, Bukas…May Pangarap. He openly declares his love for small towns and their people, and has never tired of telling their stories, culture, traditions, virtues and vices, which to big city dwellers may appear weird.

Viggo Mortensen plays twin brothers in Everybody Has A Plan, one of the films screened in the ongoing Argentine Film Festival at the Instituto Cervantes

Bayang Magiliw is shot in Pagbilao, Quezon province where Portes was born, based on the true-to-life story of a politician whose word is law and whose hobby is gathering children he has sired without the knowledge of his wife. He bans reproductive health as a crime and is initially successful. Until his misdeeds catch up with him in a farce that makes a mockery of reality, delivered in often uproariously funny sequences one would cry with laughter.

The social satire presented as “maindie” (cross between mainstream and indie) stars Wendell Ramos as town mayor, Giselle Tongi as the lawyer who goes against him, Arnold Reyes as the medical doctor imprisoned for giving anti-pregnancy pills and advice, Jackie Lou Blanco and Lloyd Samartino as parents of G, Racquel Villavicencio as the town’s barangay captain, Tony Mabesa as the old priest who falls asleep during service and confessions, plus Althea Vega, Sue Prado, Princess Manzon, Rob Sy, Benjie Felipe, Dax Alejandro, Jess Evardone, AJ Dee, Ellen Adarna and Aaron Yanga.

The other small-town story is that of Everybody Has a Plan (Todos Tenemos un Plan), set in the labyrinthine waterways of one of the tiny islands in the Tigre Delta, a vast, swampy area near Buenos Aires, Argentina. The area reminds us of the love scene between Aaron and Ellen that direk Portes points out as the marshlands of Tulay Buhangin in Quezon.

We told ourselves that the traffic and 35.5 degree temperature from Mowelfund in Quezon City where Bayang Magiliw was screened to Instituto Cervantes in Manila had better be worth it. Before the film began, however, the audience was treated to a prequel as Instituto officials escorted a film buff out of the hall, for loudly insulting Gemma Cruz-Araneta who was quietly sitting in the audience. We almost forgot our primary reason for doing the long trip was Viggo Mortensen who plays twin brothers in Everybody Has a Plan.

The two-hour film is a humorless action thriller, however, that only Viggo (remember Aragorn in Lord of the Rings) keeps it alive with his impeccable acting, especially in delineating differences between city dweller Agustin with his psychological malaise and provincial small-town hoodlum Pedro. The film gets underway when Agustin is visited by a cancer-stricken Pedro, whom he hasn’t seen in years. During the visit, Pedro dies (or is helped to die?); Agustín decides to leave his twin’s body to be mistaken for his and becomes Pedro, the beekeeper crook.

The rest of the film involves the love story between the new Pedro and his young beekeeping assistant Rosa (Sofia Gala Castaglione) who can’t help but notice the difference, but promises to keep it a secret. More action, more secrets unveiled, more inconsistencies that don’t bother first-time writer/director Argentine Ana Piterbarg. And why should she, when she has Viggo who is also one of the producers.

The critics are of the same perception apparently. The New York Times said: “Mr. Mortensen keeps you watching, even when the movie’s storytelling underwhelms.” The Village Voice agrees with “Even Viggo Mortensen’s movingly enigmatic performance as identical twins can’t help first-time Argentinean director Ana Piterbarg decide whether she is making an existential tone poem or a brutish thriller.”  

On the way home, the Viggo fan in us said, shoot those inconsistencies. Early on, we were prepared for a spaghetti or Argentinean western, and would be exceedingly content with a film where most bad people die.

More Argentine films at Instituto on April 13, 20 and 27, 2 p.m. Free entrance. For Bayang Magiliw, the film opens Wednesday, April 17.

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