December 21, 2021
It was November of 2013. The super-typhoon Yolanda and the massive storm surge it triggered had just ravaged the city of Tacloban and left it in absolute state of mass destruction. When the worst had settled down, Miguel (Daniel Padilla) soon got reunited with his girlfriend Andrea (Rans Rifol), and later his mother Norma (Charo Santos). The three planned to catch a coming ship which will take them to Manila before a rumored next typhoon will hit.
"Kun Maupay Man It Panahon" (Waray for "Whether the Weather is Fine"), had already made the rounds of various film festivals in Europe, Asia and the Americas since its grand premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland this August 2021. It had earned the Cinema e Gioventù Prize in Locarno and the Best Director prize in London. This December, it finally makes its premiere on local soil, and as an entry of the Metro Manila Filmfest.
While its award-winning, festival-hopping reputation may spark interest among Filipino cinephiles to go see it, this is definitely not the kind of film mainstream MMFF audiences would take to easily. In the past, the box-office of MMFF had been dominated by shallow slapstick comedies by Vice Ganda or Vic Sotto. On the other hand, "Kun Maupay" is an art film which puts value on cinematic artistry rather than popular entertainment.
This is the feature film directorial debut of Carlos Francisco Manatad. He is known as one of the most prolific film editors of the country before he began directing short films which had also been screened festivals abroad. He is from Tacloban City and he began work on this film soon after he went home to locate his family after typhoon Yolanda hit. 11 producers and a worldwide pandemic later, his passion project is finally complete and reaping critical acclaim.
Daniel Padilla's Miguel was a passive fellow who mainly reacted to the orders of the two women in his life. By the final third of the film, Padilla shone brightest as an actor in those wordless scenes as Miguel was being swept up by the crowd toward the ship. The excellent blocking and composition of these scenes resulted in eloquent imagery and dramatic impact, with Padilla's expressive face front and center, doing all the work.
Newcomer Rans Rifol played Andrea as an outspoken street-smart young lady who knew what she wanted and made sure she got them. She is quite strong-willed such that she can fill the screen with tension when she was on, like the scene with the butcher and the chickens, or those snide side comments she had for Norma. Her story took a strange turns, one involving a dog with a wound on the beach and another, an extravagant musical number.
Ms. Charo Santos took a long hiatus from films in 1999 and only made a comeback in 2016 to play the lead in Lav Diaz' "Ang Babaeng Humayo." Since then, she had only done "Eerie" (2019) and now this one. Her Norma was a woman desperate to find her missing husband Luis, even if it meant her own suffering. Her gut-wrenching scene pleading with Miguel to hurt her was her emotional highlight, even as her final scene dancing was ethereally memorable.
Compared to the other 7 films in the festival, this was on a level of its own when it comes to artistic merit. The stark visuals of LA and Singapore-based cinematographer Lim Teck Siang and the monumental work of production designer Whammy Alcazaren and art directors Sam Manacsa and Nimrod Sarmiento, to recreate the death and destruction in Tacloban deserve accolades. The management of the crowd scenes was also remarkable.
Matinee idol Daniel Padilla has hordes of young fans, so his name alone should bring them in to watch this and be exposed to the rich, slow and often bizarre world of art house cinema. Now whether they along with the mainstream MMFF audiences could connect with the film and see it as "a tribute to the resilience, strength and perseverance of Filipinos" as the filmmakers envisioned, that still remains to be seen. It is about time. 8/10.
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