Desperately
poor, Mila is about to sell one of her seven children to a sexual
predator. Relax, it is only a
movie. It isn’t real. It isn’t even really happening in the film
either, just the film-within-the-film, if it ever gets made. The poverty fetishism of international
festival films gets a healthy skewering in Marlon Rivera’s The Woman in the Septic Tank (trailer here), which is
currently screening at MoMA as part of their continuing ContemporAsian film series.
Mila
is in for a host of degradations, but we will only see a few scenes of her
painful life over and over, as first-time director Rainer, his producer
Bingbong, and their PA Jocelyn try to best calibrate the privation porn for
politically correct film festival audiences.
Whenever possible, they crank up the transgressiveness and even
contemplate turning it into a musical (bringing to mind a certain Lebanese
Oscar wannabe).
Of
course, the key will be casting a big star as Mila to secure the financing. As luck would have it, real life comic
superstar Eugene Domingo is looking for a prestige project. There will have to be a meeting of the minds
on certain creative decisions first though, including which of Domingo’s three
forms of [over]-acting Rainer would prefer she employ for the film.
Displaying
an unusually sporting sense of humor, Domingo plays herself and really lets
herself have it. It is definitely a
larger than life diva turn, but it aptly serves the film’s sharp satire. The indie filmmakers are certainly on the
receiving end of plenty of jokes as well, particularly as they wax ghoulishly rhapsodic
about the cinematic potential of the teeming slum locations, until reality
rudely intrudes.
Kean
Cipriano and JM de Guzman are a bit colorless as Rainer and Bingbong,
respectively, largely functioning as straightmen to Domingo and the overriding
concept. However, Cai Cortez adds a bit
of spark to the film as their not yet completely disillusioned assistant.
If
there is one thing indie films do well it would be taking themselves too
seriously. That is why Septic is such a welcome corrective. Screenwriter Chris Martinez (who previously directed
Domingo in the popular tearjerker 100)
dishes out some rather bold comedy. Ironically,
audiences at MoMA might actually pick up on a few more jokes than Filipino
viewers, because the films Septic sends
up are produced almost entirely for foreign venues (like MoMA).