REVIEW | The fruit of one’s dreams in ‘Lihis’ and ‘Bamboo Flowers’

Joem Bascon and Jake Cuenca in a scene from 'Lihis'.

“Self-actualization,” broadly defined, lies at the heart of “Lihis” and “Bamboo Flowers”, part of the ongoing All Masters Film Festival at SM cinemas nationwide.

Almost 20 years ago, scriptwriter par excellence Ricky Lee told me the story of two gay lovers in the New People’s Army, something that antedated “Broadback Mountain’s” take on gay cowboys.

It took two decades to turn the script into a moving film, as directed by Joel Lamangan. Sure, the Communist movement now allows same-sex marriage, but it was a different terrain decades ago, when the movement was run by macho men with an aim at national liberation, not the liberation of genders nor the formation of sexual orientation.

Their names are slippery as their identities – Cesar (Jake Cuenca) and Ador (Joem Bascon) or whatever – but what is true and constant is their love for each other.

Cuenca and Bascon play the two lovers with a slowly burning intensity. The male gaze – the look of desire hidden in the folds of one’s eyelids because it is “wrong”—is conveyed by the actors. Joel Lamangan is not called an actor’s director for nothing.

There is good ensemble acting all throughout—from Isabelle Daza as the young teacher writing a thesis about the forgotten Acacia Massacre, to Raquel Villavicencio in an elegant and award-worthy turn as the schoolteacher-mother of Cesar.

The young cinematographer Mo Zee also captures all of this with his striking images. Cesar waits for Ador somewhere in Santa Rita in Bicol, in front of him a simmering kettle, darkness all around him. The gay lovers make out in parallel editing with that of the straight ones (Daza and her boyfriend, who soon leaves for Singapore after their lovemaking, the beast!).

There is no difference, the film seems to imply, there is the same hunger for the beloved, the same sighs and kisses and union of bodies into one.

The dialogues are vintage Ricky Lee, at turns poetic (the frog at the bottom of a well from a haiku) to incendiary (the people’s voices raised in protest against the massacre). They can also be mordantly funny, as when Gloria Diaz, who plays a kooky activist, rails against the “ugly aliases” the Movement foisted on her, a “sali-sali” woman from the bourgeoisie.

“Self-actualization,” or the realization of one’s dreams, is also the main thread running in “Bamboo Flowers”.

Ruru Madrid in a scene from 'Bamboo Flowers'.

The intersecting stories are that of a woman and her son in much-reduced circumstances; a Marine Engineering student who always flunks his classes to the irritation of his younger sister who had to forego her studies so he could finish college first; and a young man (in a splendid performance by Ruru Madrid) who wants to sing so he could send money for his grandfather’s medicine.

The settings—the river and the bucolic town and the capital city of Tagbilaran in Bohol—are also characters in this film.

The beginning of the film is rather slow, and just as you are wondering how Direk Maryo J. delos Reyes would pull all the threads together, the film magically becomes a seamless whole that tugs at the tough strings of one’s heart.

For who has it amongst us who did not dream and dare and did everything to turn this dream into reality? The central symbol here is the pilak na bagting (the silver bell), the shape of one’s dream, that mutates into the bamboo flowers that bloom just when the bamboo is about to wither and die.

Spanky Manikan and Irma Adlawan deliver solid performances, wine maturing in glorious flasks. Mylene Dizon and Orlando Sol are also good, respectively, as the mother in one of the sub-plots and as the brother who always flunks in another sub-plot. I was surprised to see Gino Antonio—the bold movie star of the 1980s—play a father, and he did play it with emotional resonance as well.

We should thank the Film Development Council of the Philippines for giving the seed grants that allowed our seasoned directors to make these movies. I just hope they will have an extended run in the cinemas, or have DVD versions soon, for their insights into gender relations and the relations between family members are heartfelt, and therefore, very Filipino.

Comments can be sent to danton_ph@yahoo.com.

REVIEW | The fruit of one’s dreams in ‘Lihis’ and ‘Bamboo Flowers’

Source: InterAksyon.com (September 17, 2013 at 07:57AM)

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