Festival: CineFilipino 2016 - "Star Na Si Van Damme Stallone"

This third feature film by Randolph Longjas (a participant in the 1st edition of CineFilipino) is about a single mother (Candy Pangilinan) who is facing the challenges of raising a son with Down's Syndrome. Of all the features that I saw so far at the festival, this one is the most pleasantly surprising. The film's trailer makes you think that it's a light-hearted and goody-goody story of a special child who dreams big. Well, it's still light and feel-good, but not after it wrenches your heart and plays a rather melancholic and downbeat tone. If there's really such a thing called beautiful sadness, then this should be it. Not to mention that the film also serves as a wonderful eye-opener. Because come to think of it, we haven't really seen a Filipino film about Down's Syndrome, much less about such a special child that takes to heart its subject. I can think of one, but it's from another country: "The Eighth Day", from Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael. And it's not even about Down's Syndrome per se. 

Aside from showing a big heart for its subject, the film, written by frequent collaborator Ronald Allan Habon, is to be admired for its remarkable restraint and quietness. The subject-matter is admittedly ripe for bathos, histrionics and moralizing, but the director and the screenwriter know when to pull the brakes. They just let the images and the characters' hushed emotions speak for themselves - in volumes. The kind of drama that the film displays onscreen, even with the framings and close-ups, remind one of the austere dramas of Ingmar Bergman. Though unlike the Swedish master, Longjas doesn't go further as to explore spiritual/philosophical questions (though the mother asks a telling question later in the film: if it makes her a bad mother if she prays for her son to die first;we know what she means and it's heartbreaking). But that's just fine. We are simply happy that the film serves as a quietly-touching portrait of a mother's unconditional love. Isn't it nice if we sometimes get purged of the dysfunctional families being portrayed onscreen? 

And as in the other CineFilipino features that I previously saw for this edition, the lead performances in "Star Na Si Van Damme Stallone" do more to hold the film together. Ms. Pangilinan is a marvel to behold in this one. She's been in the industry for a long time already and we know her to be a talented yet underappreciated comedienne, always doing sidekick or comic-relief works for a lot of stars. Yet, it's only now that she was given the lead and she definitely gives her all to it, much to our delight. As a kind of mater dolorosa, she expresses more than sorrow;she's a wellspring of varied emotions. There's confusion, anger, fear, wonder, hope and joy. She's just like any mother can be. And of course, her titular son (played in different ages by Paolo Pingol and Jadford Dilianco). (Don't you think that if the director had chosen it to be so, he could've made the film ala-"Boyhood"?) The boys wholly capture our hearts because we know that they are not acting at all. A natural humanism shines forth from their "performances". All the other films that I saw in the festival so far are well-made and commendable, but "Star Na Si Van Damme Stallone" could easily stand out. Beautiful. 

A quietly-touching story of mother and son in "Star Na Si Van Damme Stallone", a film entry in CineFilipino 2016