In
a bit of a departure, cinematic provocateur Raya Martin’s latest outing has a Twin Peaks flavor. Frustratingly though,
it best corresponds to Fire Walk with Me.
A disturbed teenager becomes increasingly preoccupied with a malevolent local
legend in Martin’s How to Disappear
Completely (trailer
here),
which screens on the opening night of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ 2014 New Filipino Cinema series.
Eventually,
her terrible home life will have tragic consequences. Constantly evading her
father’s inappropriate attention, while her hyper-religious mother sternly
passes judgment on them both, the young girl has become obsessed with the tale
of a distraught ghost eternally searching for her children that were washed
away in a typhoon. Like the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster in Ghostbusters, they might sound like a
fitting match, but bringing together could be dangerous. However, the vengeful
specter may or may not be out there watching them.
Disappear is at least two
films uneasily joined together, if not several more. Frankly, it is
surprisingly effective in the early going. Martin’s narrative can safely be
described as fractured, even at the nest of times, but he crafts some genuinely
creepy moments, even as he deconstructs the supernatural genre. Sadly, the film
unambiguously jumps the shark around the point the girl’s school stages a
pageant so virulently hostile to America and Western democratic capitalism,
even the Bread and Puppets agitprop troupe would find it didactic.
If
Martin wants to make his points in the clunkiest manner possible then so be it.
Yet, he takes things even further in a bizarre, apparently unrelated coda. To
make his point about the dehumanizing effects of colonialism (or is it
globalism now?) he follows a pack of rabid punks desecrating the village’s cemetery
and then abducting and terrorizing several young school girls. It is a sequence
most viewers will wish they could un-see. Whatever Martin’s obscure intentions
might be, the further desensitizing influence of Disappear is entirely on him.
Ness
Roque is impressively expressive as the slow burning girl. Even though her
parents are shopworn stereotypes, Noni and Shamaine Buencamino commit to them
admirably. Had Martin maintained his focus on her and the mad ghostly woman, Disappear would have been a far more
dramatically unified film. Instead, it leaves the audience angry at Martin
rather than corporate colonialism or any related bogeyman. Not recommended even
to the most ardent anti-American ideologue, How
to Disappear Completely launches the Yerba Buena Arts Center’s annual New
Filipino Cinema this Wednesday (6/11) in San Francisco.
