This
shape-shifting witch has become a popular Cebuano urban legend, but it should
not surprise anyone to there is a man to blame for all her horrors. He did her
wrong, but she would not be ignored. Her story will be told in a fractured,
narrative-scrambling manner in Keith Deligero’s Lily
(trailer here),
which screens during the annual New Filipino Cinema series at the Yerba Buena
Arts Center.
While
hunting with a dubious friend, Mario Ungo nearly bagged a mythical sigbin, but
one false step nearly did him in instead. Fortunately (or so it seems at the
time), the titular Lily finds him. Hiding him in her room in a remote convent,
where she seems to be a prospective novice, she nurses him back to health.
Given all the time they spend together, it is not so surprising when Lily
becomes pregnant with his son. Soon, they become a common law family unit, but
Ungo is clearly uncomfortable and restless. Eventually, he leaves to find work
in Manila, where he repeats the pattern with Jane, a stripper. Resenting his
deceit and abandonment, Lily will come looking for him—and she is far more dangerous
than he ever realized.
Or
something like that. Deligero puts the film through a stylistic blender of jump
cuts, flashbacks and flashforwards, lurid subliminal imagery, and poverty porn.
To get an idea of the vibe, imagine if Khavn had remade Cat People as a hardcore music video. It definitely shares a
kinship with aesthetically severe, experimental horror films, such as Khavn’s
work and Dodo Dayao’s Violator, particularly
with respects to the graphic visuals found in the former.
TV
idol and rom-com movie star Shaina Magdayao certainly deserves credit for
taking a chance on such an out-of-left-field departure. She is undeniably
intense as the vengeful supernatural being, but she also connects with her
tragic core. Rocky Salumbides is thoroughly despicable as Ungo, but in a
believable way that helps the film get to where it needs to go. Natlileigh
Sitoy also covers a lot of ground as the sultry but vulnerable Jane. Frankly,
it is pretty impressive the cast registers at all, given the film’s jittery
style and mondo extreme elements.
