Agaton and Mindy
2 hrs., 45 mins.
Starring : Chase Vega, Louise De Los Reyes, Cherrie Gil
Written by : Lore Reyes, Peque Gallaga
Directed by : Peque Gallaga
Review by : Carlo CIelo
Cross-published with the Carlo Cielo blog
****
It’s been more than a year since ‘Agaton and Mindy’ played at select ( SM ) cinemas. Part of the Director’s Guild of the Philippines’ (DGP) ‘Sine Direk’ series, this was among the 6 new indie productions showcased, as helmed by six of the country’s prominent ‘mainstream’ directors; genres ranging from straight-up farce ( Fushia ), to political thriller/action flick by way of melodrama ( Beinte ). All of the films have social intentions, with proceeds going to the Guild’s pet scholarship program. One of them, Soxie Topacio’s ‘Ded Na Si Lolo’, went on to become the country’s entry in the
‘09-‘10 Oscars.
Yet it’s the Peque Gallaga film which sticks to mind the most; mainly due to the past notoriety of the director, and its allegedly bleak-ish ending being hailed as some kind of a precedent. Now, it would be wise to inform all that this is a love story, which, a cursory inspection of the big studios’ slate should tell you, is the main course for the day; and one of its perceived key strengths in ensuring returns is its suppose to be ‘sticky-sweet’. Like an additive.It repeats, because it’s about regurgitating feelings; playing with certain familiarities, and squeezing as much mileage out of them. Going through the motions and pushing emotional buttons, the ups and downs and the attendant gruel, putting audiences in this sensational realm, the heightened place they all want to be. What matters is they are made to feel good about themselves. So, the guy gets to ‘claim’ the girl, and the hefty baggage was foreplay to post-coital denouement.
Okay, I’m not going to overstate this movie and say it ISN’T any of these; that it dispenses with their set rhythms and rigors, & curveballs into becoming something else. In fact, it probably dishes out the SAME ‘meat and potatoes’ you’d get from any Star Cinema or GMA love flick. However, while studio stuff keeps it quaint and processed food, ‘Agaton and Mindy’ delivers it fairly raw. And in this day and age, with sterilized tripe being so damn culturally ascendant, that should count for at least something.
****
Movie begins at a dance studio. A private school troupe practices for its upcoming performance. Helmed by Tanya Dolokov ( played by veteran actress Cherie Gil ), an inexplicably flamboyant yet self-aware diva-lite, its members are constantly prodded into facing up to what they’re supposed to do: that it is an erotic dance, a sex dance. It’s embracing the calculated sensuality of the moment, and transmitting that to the audience by plunging headlong into libido. Losing all inhibitions, taking down defenses, guided only by instruction; so the ebbs and flows could get at them in an exact, specific pattern ( & vice versa ) – into continually proceeding. The teacher is damn persistent about this, knocking the eroticism into their senses at every single opportunity, so they would learn to ‘let themselves go’ and stuff.
These would all depend on two dancers: 15 year olds Agaton ( Chase Vergel ) and Mindy ( Louise de Los Reyes ). They’re not exactly pals at the onset. Seemed they couldn’t be further apart; they obviously come from different social circles, even as it’s suggested they’re of the same bourgeoisie strata – their only common platform, really, apart from the studio stage.
Mindy is lackadaisical, scatter-brained, and dangerously erratic. She unabashedly wallows in her affluence; rubbing her fortunes to the face of just about ANYONE, except for a moment of hesitation taking to mind potential further gain. Often, this would lead to bouts of self-destruction, leaving her repeatedly wanting.
Agaton, meanwhile, seems more mannered about his time in the plenty; even as he isn’t exactly an improvement. He is very pensive and guarded about what he’s got, apparently guided by the fear that at any moment, he could lose his material possessions, and they will all take it away from him. So he spends the day carefully and cautiously trudging through his side of the Third World, so that at the end, he’ll still end up enrolled in a school, and returning to a house with money in his pocket.
Perhaps, it is being so grounded to the gravity of his situation and the paranoia of his brand of pragmatism, that it sends the wrong vibrations to everyone he meets in this private high school world. That maybe, he isn’t one of them. That maybe, he’s of another, more destitute variety. Because, if he’s one of them, then what is he fearing ?
Even a trip to his mansion fails to placate doubts. Not even his money could protect him from discrimination of class.
Mindy wouldn’t have any of his problems, though, the same way she wouldn’t have any of these ‘regulations’. In fact, she openly desires his destitution. She pines for it. So what if his life is grime ? That shit is ‘hot’. Impoverishment entails extreme need, in search of unchecked appetites. The lass knows when to take her cue.
Agaton and Mindy get paired as the recital’s main act.
****
Peque Gallaga is fairly unflinching in his treatment. For example is forthright about the lurid purpose of this type of film. Not much of a surprise: the guy did cut out a name for himself with his string of soft-core features in the ‘80s and the ‘90s. He was once quoted as saying his ulterior cinematic goal is having someone get fucked in a Maria Clara ( traditional ) dress.
Among his famous works was ‘Scorpio Nights’, an apparently an ero-guru, agro-punk take on social realist filmmaking. In some ways, this is his ‘Scorpio Nights’ for the current PG-13 set: with the settings changed ( i.e. from informal settlement to the subdivision ), the vantage point shifted ( i.e. from neurotic, minimum wage types, to shifty, well-to-do brats ), yet with all the fatalism intact. Some scenes declare this awareness: after being badly burned when a performance didn’t go right, he visits a prostitution den in a shanty town.Maybe because this is really a sex flick; like all romantic flicks are sex flicks. Except the sex here is embedded in bourgeois transactions, and its ‘lewdness’ not in the way of thrashing nude bodies, but in predatory thoughts and acts. All the people in this movie are scum: petty, conniving, spreading conceit, and don’t seem to have any more concerns than the hormonal; such pointless beasts of gratification that all empathy dissipates. Characters would screw in the same knee-jerk way they’d get beaten up for no good reason, with the camera-phone to record, mainly because they get in the way of someone else’s fucking. Every single act here is orgasmic in class oppression.
But perhaps, what Peque is really doing here, is take these middle-class romance flicks, and to put them through the physics of our social reality. If not pry them and turn them inside-out; revealing the inherent ugliness of their sticky-sweet premises, by exposing the filthy cheap terms these would exist in, the formal transgressions which define, and the sweaty- ass climate under which these deeds would be enacted. This rape is what governs the film.
So the main couple here gets so bogged down by their abdication of control, that they get crushed by the weight of the ensuing regression, their backs bent, brought to their knees, and pinned to the ground, their feelings shoving them back to the uteri. It is fitting then that the film’s main motif is the fetus recoil.
****
Peque has also dabbled in horror films in the past. With the grasp for mood here underlined by hostility and tension, it’s with no doubt that he’s playing with his accumulated strengths, giving us a view of a shared condition that is equal parts harrowing and inevitable.
That’s the first half.
The second half abandons its merits in favor of simple reduction. The latter part is an endless succession of tropes, a grotesque ‘Filipino chick flick’ hall of horrors, an attempt to collapse an entire history of tired formulas (which isn’t much of a history) in a way that is tongue in cheek. Here, its as if he just proceeds with enumerating all his filmic views, with a kind of ‘coda’ at the end that ties into a previous visual cue, to pass this thing off as a whole.
Nonetheless, his direction is consistent enough that it does seem like a whole. The pacing is steady; the flow seamless, a straight-arrow focus all throughout. Its cinematic elements are so efficiently employed it makes you think any of these were intended.
****
There is definitely a meta-textual conceit in all this, but the film went too lazy about it at the end. Peque Gallaga sacrifices what could have been a more authentic cinematic work in favor of an easy send-off to the genre.
It does get one thing right about our culture, though, and it’s something most our cinema and our critics have refused to admit:
The poor may live and breathe in sex, but the sleaze is definitely coming from the rich.
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