Poor d'Or
THE WOMAN IN THE SEPTIC TANK satirises both the Filipino film industry and the film festival culture - but is there more than just a laugh to this Berlinale Forum entry?
THE WOMAN IN THE SEPTIC TANK
In a Filipino slum, a desperate mother fights back tears as she chaperones her daughter to the doorstep of an elderly Caucasian man, ready to make a transaction that she’ll forever regret. This sequence, preceded by a child publicly defecating in the street, is the very definition of poverty porn, almost to the point where you expect to see UNICEF listed in the production credits.
Redeemably, however, the above sequence invites ridicule in Marlon Rivera’s refreshing Berlinale Forum satire ANG BABAE SA SEPTIC TANK (THE WOMAN IN THE SEPTIC TANK, Philippines). The mother and her child, we discover, are fictional characters within a film currently being developed by a trio of latte-sipping filmmakers who think shock and manipulation are a sure-fire way to win an Oscar. As they make their way to a cast meeting with their lead actress Eugene Domingo – a popular Filipino comedian playing herself and hilariously sending up actor egocentricity – the three toss around ideas on how to create the ultimate festival film, re-imagining the same sequence over and over again with every narrative and stylistic cliché imaginable. Would it hit harder if it were a gritty docudrama or a campy musical? What if it were the mother’s son, and not her daughter, being pimped to the paedophile? How could Cannes resist!
Laughs abound no matter what tropes they try, particularly when viewed in the festival environment where there’s a high chance everyone in the cinema has recently seen the kind of film Rivera is ridiculing. Screenwriter Chris Martinez doesn’t miss an opportunity to lampoon the current trends of Filipino cinema, where he implicates local filmmakers like Brillante Mendoza for exploiting the impoverished in a bid to gain festival accolades. Martinez’s material is bolstered by first-time director Marlon Rivera’s crack comedic timing and naturalistic staging, even if budgetary restraints cause the cinematography and lighting to be a little rough around the edges during scenes where it shouldn’t be. The musical numbers, for example, would have hit higher satirical heights had they looked glitzy and overproduced. Elsewhere, shaky DV footage is effectively employed to lend the film-within-a-film an authentic documentary feel, where not even the camera’s lens is immune to the grime of the ghettos.
Therein lies the power of SEPTIC TANK; despite its blatant cynicism, there’s still something highly disquieting about watching these indie buffoons scout the actual slums of Manila for their film, gleefully planning shots as xylophone-ribbed children look on in starved bewilderment. Sure, you’re still able to laugh at the wry hypocrisy of it all, but never does the knowledge evade you that those children aren’t acting.
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