The Quiet Power of Filipiñana: Very Little Dialogue But Each Frame Has a Lot to Say

(SPOT.ph) Filipiñana is the remarkably confident debut from writer-director Rafael Manuel, and it comes with a remarkable pedigree. This feature film is an expansion of Manuel’s short film, which won the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the 70th Berlinale International Film Festival back in 2020. The finished film so impressed Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke that he boarded as executive producer and snapped up distribution rights for China.

It’s easy to see what left an imprint on Zhangke: Manuel’s assuredness is present in every meticulously composed frame, every cleverly deployed trick in his sound design. But mostly, it's in the self-contained ambition of his premise: all the ills of Philippine society diagnosed within the daily operations of a wealthy country club. The tone is set early and efficiently. After a humorous intro where a tour guide teaches a minibus full of Chinese tourists how to say “Mabuhay!”, we see the vehicle navigating a narrow city street crammed with residents clamoring for their daily supply of rationed water. From a slum neighborhood where people have to queue at a truck for water, we cut to the country club where the minibus is going, sprinkling copious amounts of water to keep its rolling courses green.

From there, we follow two protagonists as they go through their day. The first is 17-year-old Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a blue-skirted tee girl who watches ants overrunning fallen mangoes and Catholic cardinals pose for selfies. She also spies on her enigmatic, philandering boss Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman) going off on trysts with one of the pink-clad caddies. The caddie, who is named Beth (Angeli Bayani), is also our entry point to the social hierarchy within the club’s employees. The caddies occupy a higher rank because they interact with the wealthy clients; meanwhile, tee girls like Isabel are left to gossip about the caddies’ affairs while they kneel before the rich men practicing their swings at the driving range, their faces and bodies a mere few feet from the titanium rods slicing through the air in front of them.

The other lead is Clara (Carmen Castellanos), a rich transplant from New York whose uncle (Carlos Siguion-Reyna) is cajoling her to come work for him, often by encouraging her mediocre game. After Clara mentions that she had to play by herself at the public golf courses in the States, her caddie wonderingly turns to her and asks, “But...who carried your clubs?”

Through the stories of these two girls who could not be more diametrically opposite--in looks, upbringing, socio-economic background—we uncover the corruption, violence and patriarchal politics burbling beneath the obsessively tended surfaces of the country club.

The beauty of Filipiñana lies in its self-contained setting never being stretched beyond its bounds as a metaphor: The country outside is rife with exploitation and inequality, so why should the country club be any different? Clara is involved in an unfortunate accident with an errant golf ball, and the mechanisms to erase it reflexively spring into action. And Isabel, who seems to be harboring a strange attraction to her boss, takes the opportunity to return one of his golf clubs to his office; it is to Filipiñana’s credit that the assignment does not turn out the way we expect.

Filipiñana unfolds with very little dialogue—even the music is minimal—in images that unfurl as if in a languid dream. That means Manuel’s imagery has to bear the load of his storytelling. He strives to make sure that every methodically choreographed frame, shot by director of photography Xenia Patricia with limpid crispness, is packed with meaning. (Dissecting, for example, a shot of Isabel teeing up balls at the driving range while framed between the legs of her boss would be overstating the message that your nerve endings are sending you.)

The trade-off for this obsessive attention to detail--as if every shot is meant to be clipped for a book on Philippine cinema--is a cold, almost clinical approach. But cold and clinical is what a satire like Filipiñana should be: You can't be warm, fuzzy and melodramatic when you're diagnosing the rot of an entire society.

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Filipiñana is currently showing in SM Megamall, SM North EDSA, SM Mall of Asia, SM Aura, SM Fairview and SM Seaside Cebu.