Elwood's follow-up project, Esoterika: Maynila, the opening film of this year's Cinema One Originals starring Ronnie Liang and Vince Tañada, is bizarre of the seductive, intoxicating kind. A high wire act, Esoterika challenges us to look at movies not in the manner we are used to because it was what was traditional, what our minds – used to lying prostrate within comfort zones – could follow and easily grasp.
It offers us a walk towards discovering the endless possibilities of the film medium through a procession of startling, striking, sometimes haunting images. The second in a trilogy about the creative process, Esoterika: Maynila is a beguiling statement from a filmmaker whose worth and reputation time and finer tastes had redeemed and re-evaluated.
Physically perfect for the part of the fellow who becomes a successful komiks author, Ronnie Liang renders the dichotomous nature of his role with luminosity and a striking sense of fully understanding the trickiness of the character. Only the perceptive will realize that the role of Mario, the once-upon-a-time cook who comes to mingle with the colorful, if strange, denizens of Manila is not without guile. Among the motley cast of eccentric characters is the opera upstart Raul, played with ferocity by Vince Tanada. Donato, Raul's gay, nouveau poor benefactor, is inhabited by Federico Olbes who looks and speaks every inch like a man of fine, polished tastes. Carlos Celdran is remarkable as the ultimate sophisticate who, for amusement, wears fangs and role-plays the metaphorical city vampire. In the context of current Philippine realities - the news-breaking Laude case, Vice Ganda as the reigning screen superstar, My Husband's Lover as a top TV series – Esoterika: Maynila plays like a plea for better understanding of homosexuality and its various permutations. But that would be a shallow summation of Esoterika for it offers much more than what it immediately conveys. Notable industry denizens have sung early praise. Young filmmaker Raya Martin calls it "a hedonistic adventure in the roller-coaster that is our society. Esoterika: Maynila is the poignant journal of a master in Philippine Cinema" while topnotch playwright Nicolas B. Pichay is obviously smitten: "In Esoretika: Maynila, Elwood Perez continues the cinematic tradition of paying homage to a city. Part diary, part fantasy, the movie evokes campy- kitschy-surreal Manila. Briny and existential, this movie shares a cinematic place alongside Bernal's Manila By Night and Brocka's Maynila Sa Mga Kuko Ng Liwanag." Raymond Lee, producer of recent gems such as Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, Endo, and Zombadings considers Elwood's latest opus a cause for celebration. "It invites you to throw caution to the wind, walk with it, and never look down." The November premiere of Esoterika was Lee's second viewing of it. "It was my second time watching it and while the demerits were more glaring, the movie's charm was even harder to resist. Amazingly, some of the demerits add to the charm! Maybe someday I'll see the movie again and realize it blindsided me with its seductively aimless ramblings, quixotic yet amorphous morality, and even its endearingly lame humor. But for now, I'm quite taken with it." A-list director Joyce Bernal is also reportedly an instant fan of Esoterika. The buzz surrounding the movie also prompted Elwood's erstwhile long-time producer Lily Monteverde to give him a call. But what's even more worth noting about Perez's resurgence is that it proves once more that he is a genius at timing. He came back at the right moment when it's a great time to be making and watching local movies and treading uncharted territory.
As he was wont in the past, something he has confided to me in one of our late-night talks, Elwood Perez just as quickly left the theater as the opening credits of Esoterika were being flashed on the big screen. There was the picture, a product of endless nights of revising and the sheer joy of working up magic from a germ of an idea, and the public's verdict on it was, as he told me in a personal message, "depended on one's perspective."
It's either you dislike it or praise it to high heavens, one hallmark of a work of art that cannot and will not be ignored.
However, I maintain that Esoterika: Maynila's main allure is the fact that it has that polarizing quality and that it is, at its very heart, irreverent. It doesn't beg for an ordinary viewer's love because that is tantamount to asking him to watch Fellini and understand the famed Italian master's hypnotic yet hard-to-decipher film language. Esoterika challenges people who've been seeing movies all their lives and profess such devotion to cinema to test further how they see movies and the many possibilities that can be explored.
In the present scheme of things, with independently produced fare and even mainstream films seemingly focused on trying to nab attention and a share of the spotlight, making movies has been reduced somehow into an undertaking marked by pomp and pageantry over and above the urgency, the emotions, the stories. In a dear friend's own words, it took a seasoned helmer like Elwood Perez to show us again how magic is expertly done.
He has more than made a new masterpiece. Elwood Perez has rewritten his own history.
