Tatsulok

Tatsulok must still be remembered as a breakthrough in Philippine cinema if only for its tight, albeit vague, delivery of an important angle on the Filipino colonial psyche that only the US-trained Aguiluz has been specially concerned with. This may be a story about Amerasian kids, but finally and chiefly or preferably a story -- years after the Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara-megged Minsa'y Isang Gamu-Gamo's brave defiance of the US' proclivity to throw its weight around -- about what happened to the way we (including the Amerasians) think about ourselves vis a vis America.

The face of Oropesa's character Luzviminda (a once-popular woman's name standing for the Philippines' Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao regions that also make up the triangle in the Philippine flag) opens the film with the lines "I didn't want this to happen" and "it's not my fault." Her voice then proceeds to serve as the movie's narrator. She sets her (Lacaba's and Aguiluz') story in Olongapo City, site of the former Subic Naval Base of the US Navy. "This is where I was born. This is where I learned about life. . ." she says.

The time is the mid-'90s. Post-bases era after the Philippine Senate finally voted to boot out American sovereignty in the area (and in Philippine air and sea space). Subic has become a freeport, taken over by renting multinational firms who've invaded the Asia-Pacific region with their import-export ethos (care of a new superpower, the WTO).

Luzviminda, about 40, is an apt symbol for the Filipino today. "I cannot escape my past." A one-time bar-girl (euphemism for strip-teaser and prostitute) who has given up a child for adoption twenty years ago (about the period of time since Minsa'y Isang Gamu-Gamo came out), she is soon to be haunted by an ignominious past. In a neighborly mahjong game, she meets up with a young tattoo artist named Dave (practicing American tattoo art, not the tattoo art of the pre-Spanish pintados) cum drummer for the band Jason & The Astronauts that plays American rock music. Luzviminda is now married to an old corporate exec who took her up, and though he is mostly sexually incompetent, Minda would often see her off at the Subic International Airport for his recurring departure to an Asia-Pacific city or another with the suspicion that he might be looking forward to a Thai massage there. Against this background, she is tempted to a jointure with the good-looking American mestizo Dave. This is her. And this is us: often tempted to an understandable jointure with anything natively wealthy, moneyed, but also aesthetically with anything American or Americanized.

This is a good attempt. But the finished product is *very* lacking. Bad cinematography, horribly choppy editing, and a plot strung together very thinly. But there were some good moments (such as the tattoo scene, which still amuses me, and the conversation about vinyl, which rocked). The mixture of two languages worked to a point, but at times seemed ridiculous (and why do Asian films always insist on subbing English lines? More funny than annoying, but it always makes me curious...) The main actress was pretty good, as were some of her friends, and her step-father. Her mother was VERY melodramatic and her boyfriend was too bland for his role. All in all, this shows exactly how amateurish and low-budget it was, which is why it's potential is so high. As it was, the quality of sound and vision were just too low. 5/10.