How do we Filipinos want to be seen? Bossing and Meme Vice try to answer

Two films from the 2024 Metro Manila Film Festival go against type and present a more telling picture of the Filipino psyche than they let on, or intend to.

The annual Metro Manila Film Festival can be a really good thing or a really bad thing, depending on where you stand. To some, it is a necessary act of market protectionism that allows Filipino films to have the whole arena to themselves on Christmas week, where many moviegoers are likely to be free—and it also gives the industry something to look forward to, a goal to pour in your best efforts and pull in all the stops, whether your film actually makes it to the roster or not. To others, it’s a week of the most cringe-worthy and embarrassing Filipino pop culture has to offer, with predictable lowest-common-denominator fare headlined by the country’s biggest stars getting all the attention it should never get in the first place. (And it gets in the way of whatever Hollywood decides to release on Christmas, too.)

Whatever the case, the MMFF has contributed greatly to Philippine cinema, being the launching pad for some memorable prestige films such as Jose Rizal and Muro Ami—both directed by the late Marilou Diaz-Abaya—as well as the successful Mano Po franchise and Magic Temple, a core memory for 90s kids. At the very least it has given steady work to behind-the-scenes folk, as shown by the longevity of Vic Sotto’s Enteng Kabisote franchise (which began on television in the early 90s) and the crowd-pleasers of Vice Ganda and Coco Martin.

Sometimes the film festival’s roster comes closer to what a snob would say it should be: filled with challenging, almost artsy films. (Not sure why they’d entrust that role to a government agency that is most known for grappling with the forever problem of Manila traffic, but hey, whatever.) This year, the festival’s 50th, is perhaps one for them: it’s achieved a balance of big stars and intriguing plots, and there’s no obvious money grabs in sight—although we still do have rom-coms that could have been released at any other time of the year.

Perhaps most interestingly, two of the festival’s mainstays—the two that some see as “the problem”, with their cheap laughs and wall-to-wall promotion on their respective noontime shows—have gone against type. Vic Sotto has left the fantasy-comedy realm for the almost-gritty alternate-universe drama The Kingdom, while Vice Ganda flexes his muscles for the indie-esque dark comedy And the Breadwinner Is… Apart from livening up this year’s roster, both films end up saying a lot more about the Filipino condition and mindset, so it’s a no-brainer that I’d pay for tickets to both, rather than wait for them on streaming. (Also, be warned: spoilers are up ahead.)

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Vice Ganda’s larger-than-life personality and occasionally abrasive comedy-bad humor has led to several MMFF entries that are heavy on the jokes and light on everything else—and if you’re predisposed to disliking anything the lead host of It’s Showtime does, then you won’t like any one thing of it. But for And the Breadwinner Is…, his first collaboration with director and writer Jun Robles Lana—incidentally one of the writers of the aforementioned Jose Rizal and Muro-Ami—hopes are high that he will do something different.

Well… no. The promo for the film may have focused on the drama, but Lana is also known for his comedies; for last year’s festival he directed the sleeper hit Becky and Badette. The first half of the film also has the manic energy of Vice’s previous work, although the jokes don’t come in rapid succession. But there is a delicate balancing act at play, between the humor his fans have come in to expect, and how it serves an overarching plot and brings more weight to the heavier moments.

The film centers on Bambi (Ganda), a Filipino worker on Taiwan who juggled many jobs to be able to fulfill one of his ambitions for his family: a new house. On his birthday, he goes home, only to find out that there’s no new house to speak of. Frankly it’s a bit of an outrageous premise, and that makes the first-half shenanigans—when he and his siblings attempt to pull off insurance fraud—a little bit easier to swallow. But what drives the feature are the presence of actual stakes despite the supposed antagonist not asked to be compelling. No, it’s the family’s inner demons that they have to face, and it naturally propels the film forward.

If this was a film review, I’d obviously point you to the ten-minute confrontation scene, seemingly shot on a single take, where everyone gets to flex their muscle. It’s also where you are reminded that, while this is a Vice Ganda vehicle, this is very much an ensemble piece. Jhong Hilario, Gladys Reyes, and the inimitable and ever-reliable Eugene Domingo work alongside Vice to flesh out the point where the shenanigans end and everything comes to a boil. Heck, I should also give credit to Maris Racal—the controversy surrounding her and Anthony Jennings (aka the film’s not-quite-compelling antagonist) undeniably disrupted the promo for this film, but she showed why she is one of Philippine showbiz’s rising stars today. (I still want to watch Sunshine, the Antoinette Jadaone-helm feature she stars in, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.)

If I was being cynical, I would say that that scene was designed to manipulate me into feeling something, but the film always had something meaningful to say about the people who find themselves earning for and supporting their own family, especially those who had the role thrust upon them. Many decide to leave the Philippines for further opportunities abroad. When the government says our “overseas Filipino workers” are the “bagong bayani” (new heroes) of our people, they aren’t kidding: our latest economic figures show our Net Primary Income—meaning, the amount of money coming in from outside the country, primarily remittances from these overseas workers—is at PHP 2 trillion, or 9% of the country’s gross national income. (Sorry for the economics terms, but we often talk about gross domestic product, which is the total value of all that we produced within the country.)

And they often do so at high emotional cost. The Philippines being a family-centric culture—for better or worse—it’s difficult for some to leave loved ones for a chance at a better life, not just for themselves, but for those aforementioned loved ones. The opening scenes in Taipei were particularly striking to me, as I remembered my very first trip to the city, particularly the red-eye I was in, and me being surrounded by many fellow Filipinos, all holding plastic envelopes with lots of documents inside—all booking a one-way ticket, starting new jobs in the country’s many factories. (It’s a fact that’s easy to miss for me, who worked as a professional all my life; my peers would likely think of the chance of working abroad as a sign that you’ve moved up in life rather than a sign that you want to move up.)

Some, including those in government, see the fact that Filipinos have to leave the country to make a living as a sign that things aren’t all that great in the Philippines. There is a hope, often expressed in hushed tones, that these OFWs can return to the country, get away from potentially perilous conditions, and make a living here, closer to their families. The plight of Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipino worker who was caught with drugs on her flight to Indonesia and was spared the death penalty before being allowed to return to the country to serve out the rest of her life sentence, highlights that. But then, we can’t help but be cynical about it: inequalities remain rampant, and vested interests mean there seems to be little appetite to solving underlying problems. It’s easy for some to feel hopeless about their situation, whether you’re working abroad or in the country.

One of the film’s underlying themes is the need for rest, not just to recharge but to enjoy the rewards of your toil. I feel it was clunkily handled by the film’s promotion—it went a little heavy on the theme leading up to the release, and I feel it didn’t properly utilize Vice’s earnest nature. It’s a shame, because among a population where everyone seemingly is in survival mode—heck, where getting out of it means relying on someone to be on survival mode for you—this is a pretty prevalent sentiment. One does not need the point driven home by SB19’s excellent “Mapa”, a paean to the pop group’s parents, although it does capture everything neatly, and makes for a bittersweet coda.

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I have had this thought several times, and I’m sure it’s come across a lot of yours, too: would our fates be different if the Philippines had a different history? Would we not have to consider leaving everything behind if this is a different country we’re living in? To put it more bluntly, if we were more like Singapore—where working abroad is a privilege and not a necessity—would things be better?

The Kingdom dares to go through this thought exercise, setting itself in an alternate timeline where the Philippines was never conquered and colonized. The appeal is easy. Some attribute our pains to our almost 400 years as a colony—333 years to the Spanish and 48 years to the Americans, not to mention the Japanese during the war and, for a few years and in select locations, the British. This vision of a Philippines free of imposed external influences is key to how some of us have heavily fetishized aspects of our indigenous culture, like how some badly want the baybayin script (it’s not called “alibata”) to be used in our street signs, the way the Thai script is used in Thailand, never mind that it’s not how we communicate… but I digress.

In the movie, it’s not the Philippines—that’s a name we got from Philip II of Spain—but Kalayaan, which translates to “freedom”. In this timeline, the many peoples of these 7,000-plus islands, unconquered across the centuries, were brought together under a monotheistic monarchy, led by Lakan Makisig (Sotto), who grapples with who to pass on his throne to when he abdicates at some future point. That makes the direction of this film clear: the efforts at world-building (and they aren’t insubstantial, although I can’t help but feel if The Kingdom was a television series as originally planned, we’d have explored this a lot more) is just a backdrop to the admittedly propulsive story of intrigue and inequality.

That is the other thing. If you came in to this film thinking you’d be treated to an alternative vision for the Philippines where we were never conquered and thus everything is awesome, well, nope. After the admittedly manipulative prologue of the mighty Kalayaan coast guard kicking a foreign country’s puny vessel off its seas—I mean, what better way to do fantasy fulfillment than to reverse the roles?—The Kingdom punctures that expectation very quickly. It does not just set up the caste system this society operates in—the film’s other lead, the also-reliable Piolo Pascual, plays a “tinatwa”, the lowest of the low, banished from society because of his father’s deeds—but shows how the same problems we face now remain present in this version of events. Inequalities remain, if not a little more obvious in this case. Corruption remains. Vested interests remain. Heck, the most supreme of political dynasties exists here—the monarchy, and here family members don’t so much run for a spot in the family business, but rather, just wait for one to die (or, in this case, engineer everything) for them to assume their “rightful” place.

But, again, the world-building is secondary to the plot, even if the promo for The Kingdom centered heavily on those efforts. At its core, it’s a political thriller slash family drama, with star turns from Pascual, Sue Ramirez and Iza Calzado. You’re probably watching this out of curiosity for Sotto, whose film oeuvre is centered on comedy, but if you’ve seen his work in the Eat Bulaga! Lenten drama specials—notably last year’s, Para ‘Di Makalimot, where he grapples with abandonment and fatigue… much like Bambi, really—you know this is nothing new to him. Kudos must also be given to the film’s director, Michael Tuviera, whose light touch allowed all these elements to work harmoniously—although I wish the action scenes, as the obvious chapter markers of the whole feature, felt more essential and—considering the Hammurabian nature of the lore—more romantic.

Also, my interest in world-building means I couldn’t help but want to fill in the dots, a task that the movie really didn’t have the space of doing. (Again, it was initially conceptualized as a television series, although I feel at this rate, it would have been too expensive, wouldn’t get the actors it has today, and wouldn’t have rated well.) For example, before we went under Spanish control, the Philippine islands consisted of many kingdoms divided along ethnic lines. I know it was a necessary shortcut, but I found it hard to believe that the proud peoples of the Visayas and Mindanao would’ve yielded to a “lakan” and his God-given vision. The Sultanate of Sulu—whose domain covered the Sulu archipelago, parts of Palawan and the Zamboanga peninsula, and even coastal areas of Sabah, something that would play key in a political crisis in the 1970s and resulted in a long-running Moro insurgency—would’ve asserted his place.

But then, the allure of imagining an alternate reality lies in imagining our current problems away; a lot of speculative fiction attracts us with unfathomable technologies first, and then springs familiar (and still seemingly insurmountable) problems upon us. Perhaps the fact that The Kingdom slaps us, very early on, with the fact that Kalayaan has the same struggles is biggest statement it can make. Tuviera claimed to want to make a “non-political film about politics”, but his work is perhaps the most potent political statement of this year’s MMFF… although it isn’t partisan. Or is it? Remember, there have been various efforts to rename this country to “Maharlika”—assumed to be a term for nobility, but actually referring to freedmen in pre-colonial Tagalog society—thinking it would bring our battered country dignity and prestige. A rebranding to wish all our problems away, perhaps.

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Some would call this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival one of the “better” ones, if only because of a lack of those clear money grabs—although you might put the two horror films, Espantaho and Strange Frequencies, in that category, they don’t seem to be one for cheap thrills. The rest of the roster also looks interesting, particularly the Vilma Santos-led suspense Uninvited, the prestige-baiting Green Bones, and even Isang Himala, a screen adaptation of the musical adaptation of the Nora Aunor classic, whose audacity lies in the fact that it exists in the first place.

But all attention inevitably goes to Vic and Vice releasing films that are out of their ordinary. I guess the snobs would attempt to claim victory in the fight for “quality” output on our screens—“if only they released good stuff we’d be taken more seriously!” perhaps—but after the initial shock, both The Kingdom and And The Breadwinner Is… play to their strengths and say a lot about side of their artistic sensibilities that don’t get shown off a lot—not to mention both are group efforts which wouldn’t stand tall if not for the rest of the cast and the vision of the producers and crew.

What I found fascinating after watching both movies in theaters—and ultimately, isn’t it important that we watched them in cinemas and not just on streaming?—is how they both seemingly, unknowingly, comment on the expectations put on them. With the breadwinner role thrust upon him, Bambi finds himself yearning for rest after realizing his efforts went for naught, and he realizes he wants to resist the responsibility he initially took on willingly, and sacrificed a lot for. (Side note: I am not misgendering the character—they actually address pronouns at the very beginning.) Meanwhile, Lakan Makisig silently admits the constraints put upon him by the traditions of the monarchy and the society he stands for; perhaps most of the tension of The Kingdom isn’t in the familial machinations or the class revolution, but in Sotto’s character realizing he’s not keen to be part of this mess any further.

Are both films, put together, also (accidentally) a statement on what Filipinos ultimately yearn to be? One film shows an inconvenient reality—that as our countrymen sail out of these islands for better opportunities, they subject themselves, ourselves, to disrespect and ridicule despite our intentions to just support our loved ones. The other shows what we could be: a proud race, with our culture intact and free of external blemishes, our traditions respected and placed at par with the rest of the world’s, our progress plain for everyone to see… at least on the surface, because the same problems would lie underneath.

The struggle for a better motherland has been ongoing, in various forms, for hundreds of years. The personalities, goals and definitions change, but the driving force of seeking to make things better for everyone—for certain people?—remains. But they really aren’t easy things to tackle. Whether it be in our societal frameworks or on what kind of films get shown in our film festivals, when we demand change, whose status quo are we supposed to upend? (Like, why are typical Pinoy comedies, in all its dance-number-at-the-beach-at-the-end glory, a bad thing?) Who gets to define what “oppression” is? Who gets to define what is dismantled? And will anybody even be satisfied with the end? History tells us revolutions don’t end with the desired result being achieved, and yet, we badly want that happy ending, and we badly want to rest. But really, these questions are not for either film to answer… but still, what a fascinating window they present.