These body fluids, this defilement, this shit, are what life withstands… Any
crime, because it draws attention to the fragility of the law, is
abject, but premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are
even more so because they heighten the display of such fragility.
- Julia Kristeva, An Essay on Abjection
This
is not another masterpiece by Khavn dela Cruz. This is not guerilla
digital filmmaking at its finest. This is not the stuff of cinema:
Certainly not about the high-jinks of the juvenile and the poor; the
foisting upon audiences of the taboo and the abject; no, there is no
subversive import lying just beneath the surface. No, this is not a film
by Khavn dela Cruz. This is not his 28th film. This is not Mondomanila Filmfest Motherfuckers.
Leaving aside frivolity, Mondomanila represents one of Khavn’s best films to date. Here
is a flower of evil plucked from the fertile dung of the margins,
blooming among the dregs of society; here is a work of uncompromising
and unwavering vision, a film that was almost stillborn, but now here in
our midst, jumping out at us like a jack-in-the-box, thumbing its nose
at us who cower behind blinders. In a word, be prepared for a frightful
but rollicking ride through a no-man’s land that we, the coddled, hold
our breaths against and turn away from.
At the rotten core of Mondomanila are teenage layabout Tony and his juvenile posse, Paranoid X, pleasure-seeking delinquents without a future but never to be taken for pushovers. Here in their neighborhood of slums and garbage dumps, they are kings, and the cameras observe them in very close proximity, rendering them through hallucinatory filters, washed-out colors, split screens and strange lighting. These Bunuelian olvidados exhibit few inhibitions: young, brash and compliant, they mouth their syntax of obscenities and perform outrageous acts that straddle the lines of morality. They sing and rap, some of them break-dance, some hold small jobs, some don’t, but what makes them gravitate together, what defines them, are common misery and drug-induced fantasies.
At the rotten core of Mondomanila are teenage layabout Tony and his juvenile posse, Paranoid X, pleasure-seeking delinquents without a future but never to be taken for pushovers. Here in their neighborhood of slums and garbage dumps, they are kings, and the cameras observe them in very close proximity, rendering them through hallucinatory filters, washed-out colors, split screens and strange lighting. These Bunuelian olvidados exhibit few inhibitions: young, brash and compliant, they mouth their syntax of obscenities and perform outrageous acts that straddle the lines of morality. They sing and rap, some of them break-dance, some hold small jobs, some don’t, but what makes them gravitate together, what defines them, are common misery and drug-induced fantasies.
Much
of their adolescent fantasies, predictably, revolve around sex. Among
them is a compulsive masturbator, who uncontrollably does his thing even
in the group’s presence. Another literally engages in bestiality:
easing himself on a live, squawking goose, just before he chops off its
head. Lumped together, their sexual obsession is even worse: they peep
on fornicating midgets and lesbian twins. Meanwhile, menace lurks in the
background: Whiteboy, a Caucasian pedophile, makes no bones about his
perverse ideology and submits the young kids of the neighborhood to
“sexual slavery.” Soon his deviancy hits very close to home.
Cunning murder, hypocritical revenge, to borrow Kristeva’s words, this is what the film deems its logical coda. Guile, cunning, hypocrisy are exactly the words that befit the crime, subsequently a composite of several crimes. The fact that the crime is compounded raises the acts to the level of the abject, many times over. We laugh nervously and must do a double-take, as the so-called heroes dance and sing for joy after the fact: We realize our rank complicity, our blurring concepts of right and wrong. We argue curiously: But doesn't the crime -- done as it is at the expense of someone draped with neo-colonial trappings -- translate to a symbolic act of patriotism? And how to explicate the aggravating actions after the crime? Reparations? Somehow it is so morally wrong; somehow it is so viscerally right.
Alternate Title: Mondomanila Filmfest Motherfuckers
reviewed: December 6, 2010
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