MOVIE REVIEW: Iti Mapukpukaw Is an Insightful Take on Trauma and Healing

Trigger warning: Sexual abuse

(SPOT.ph) Almost 9,000 cases of abuse against children were recorded in 2022, according to data from the Council for the Welfare of Children. Some of these happened in the home, a supposed safe space. And, unfortunately, most cases are not even reported. Filmmaker Carl Joseph Papa sheds light and shares a personal experience on this prevailing issue through Iti Mapukpukaw (The Missing), which won Best Film at the Cinemalaya 2023 and the NETPAC award; and is celebrated as the festival's first full-length animation film. Is it worth the hype? You bet it is. Spoilers ahead.

Synopsis of Carl Joseph Papa's Iti Mapukpukaw at Cinemalaya 2023:

At the center of Iti Mapukpukaw (The Missing) is Eric (Carlo Aquino), an animator with a good-paying job and a decent apartment somewhere in Metro Manila. He doesn't have a mouth; but through a whiteboard hanging from his neck, he is able to talk to people, including his newfound friend Carlo (Gio Gahol). The tension starts when his mother, Rosalinda (Dolly de Leon), asks him to check up on his uncle. This eventually triggers repressed memories hidden in the stories of aliens, a spaceship, and a quest toward healing. De Leon won Best Supporting Actress.

What we think of Iti Mapukpukaw:

Papa made several creative decisions in Iti Mapukpukaw (The Missing), and each choice added merit to make the animated film a masterclass in storytelling.

First to note, obviously, is the choice of making it through a rotoscope, which is an animation technique where the scenes and characters are shot as you would in a live-action motion picture, except they're either standing or sitting on chairs in a green room. The footage was later on rendered as an animation.

This form follows Iti Mapukpukaw's content, in that the narrative is all about coming to terms with what's real and what's not. Here we have Eric whose repressed memories of sexual abuse committed against him by his uncle are coming back to haunt him in adulthood; and some of his memories are muddled with scenes of himself getting abducted by an alien, which turns out to be a coping mechanism of his inner child. In the same way that the rotoscope blurs the line between reality and fantasy, Eric's childhood memories are blended together in a surreal sequence of realism and science fiction.

Aside from the rotoscope, Papa also used traditional 2D hand drawing to depict scenes from Eric's past, including sequences when he met his uncle for the first time as a child as well as snippets of encounters of sexual abuse in the bathroom, bedroom, and even in the car. Some of these drawings were presented early on in the plot, and with the uncle's face deliberately scratched off in these pictures, there was an immediate foregrounding as to what to expect in the narrative.

With Eric as the protagonist, Iti Mapukpukaw follows a pretty straightforward hero's journey trope, and we wouldn't have it any other way. It matches Eric's baffling imagination of alien abduction, where his mission is to vanquish the alien. It also matches adult Eric's journey in facing his trauma and, somehow, getting closure. And like any hero's journey, Eric's character comes with a sidekick through Carlo, a newfound friend-turned-boyfriend who represents every main character's emotional support—whether in real life or not.

There's also the choice of language, which in this case is Ilokano. In a talk-back session with the audience at PICC, Papa revealed that this is a personal story. Like most stories of abuse, it is hard for a child to reveal an adult's wrongdoing, especially when they're told by said adult to not say anything about it. There's the Filipino culture of regarding elders as the authority and making sure that their instructions are followed no matter what. There's also the threat of not being believed in, especially if you're a child; or disturbing family dynamics in a culture where close family ties are important. For Papa, who has finally found his voice (through a mouthless character), it was important to use the language of his family and his town. Turns out, it's de Leon's language, too, on her dad's side.

It's easy to see why de Leon's performance was applauded in the film. While the movie is entirely an animation, she was able to portray not only through words but also through body language the emotions of a mother concerned about her child's state. Moments of humor, which can only be delivered by the Dolly de Leon, added to the nuances of her character.

Without revealing much (although we probably already did), these are just some of the things that made Iti Mapukpukaw (The Missing) worth watching. It's a clever, insightful, and careful take on a sensitive topic and a silenced voice that need to be heard.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Spots

Iti Mapukpukaw is part of the 2023 Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival, which ran from August 4 to 13 at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City and at Ayala Malls (Trinoma, UP Town Center, Glorietta, and Manila Bay). It is having extended screenings until August 15 at UP Town Center, Trinoma, and Glorietta 4.

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