Moreno

Believe me, I watch more indie and foreign films than Hollywood movies, and many low-budget, non-English-language films are among my favorites. So my disappointment with Moreno is not due to a lack of appreciation for non-Hollywood film; the problem is that Moreno is simply really bad.

It's obviously an autobiographical work, and a therapeutic exercise for the writer- director who (just like the protagonist) is named Cris. This raises some difficulties as many such films fall into the trap of speaking to the director rather than the audience , and Moreno succumbs to this fate.

None of the characters are terribly interesting, and in particular, Cris makes an unsympathetic protagonist as he pursues a much younger man who seems barely of age. The reason why is revealed at the end, but it doesn't make it as a "reveal" since we are never engaged in the "mystery" to start with. Furthermore, the film-within-a- film documentary is even less engaging. Cris makes every mistake possible in filming a documentary about the plight of indigenous women on a rural island, but never shows any remorse, or any strong emotion at all. We know he is heartbroken from events that happened in the first few minutes of the movie, but it's hard to engage with a protagonist who only has one expression, a goofy, phony smile.

To top it off, the quality of video and audio is horrible. The film seems to have been shot with a cellphone.

This isn't an intriguing look at gay Filipino life like Beautiful Boxer or The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros. This is just something to pass on.