INDIE FILM: SARONGBANGGI, now SHOwING@SM DIGITAL CINEMAS

[vanceloma]

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from the makers of Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros

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SARONGBANGGI, opens today at SM DIGITAL CINEMAS

Sarong Banggi(2005)
Written and directed by Emmanuel A. Dela Cruz
Produced by Raymond Lee
Starring Jaclyn Jose and introducing Angelo Ilagan

Synposis: Sarong Banggi, as the Bicol song of the same title suggests, takes place in the span of one night. It opens with a barkada of teenage boys in search of carnal pleasure. As they go their separate ways with their respective partners for the night, one of them goes in a different direction. He strikes up a conversation with an older woman, and as the night grows deeper, so does their new relationship. What starts out casually turns intimate and surprisingly tender.

Cast:The film features a riveting performance by Jaclyn Jose, one of Philippine Cinema’s most effervescent and awarded actresses. She has starred in some of the most significant films of the last three decades: Private Show(Chito Roño), Macho Dancer(Lino Brocka), Tuhog(Jeffrey Jeturian) and, recently, Masahista(Brilliante Mendoza), which is awarded top prize in Locarno. Her prestigious body of work has been recognized with a special retrospective and tribute in Amiens. She extends able support to new comer Angelo Ilagan in his first ever foray in film.

Production: The film marks the directing debut of Emmanuel A. Dela Cruz from his own screenplay. He has won several awards for his screenplays, and short films. A veteran creative consultant for film and creator for television, Sarong Banggi is his first production venture with his company, ufo Pictures, the makers of the celebrated first feature film The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, already awarded top prizes in the Montreal, ImagiNative, Singapore Film Festivals and is debuting this year in Sundance and in the Berlin Kinder Fest.

ufo Pictures: co-founded with writer-producer Raymond Lee(Anak, Tanging Yaman, Milan), writer Michiko Yamamoto(Magnifico), writer-director Ned Trespeces (Jologs, Trabaho) and writer-filmmaker Jade Castro(The Anothers).

[wang2x]

kato nakakita na unya ani, hatag mo reviews para pud makabalo mi kung nindot ba ang movie..thanks.

[Flame alchemist]

nindot cya bai

[vanceloma]

from http://sarongbanggi.livejournal.com/

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SARONG BANGGI:
A BRIEF ENCOUNTER OF INTIMACY


This film is slow-paced and quiet. But it is precisely because of this that makes it exceptional. In the first place, it approximates the flow and rhythm of a lullaby, which is that of the Bicol ditty after which it was titled. The pacing is languorous precisely because Sarong Banggi (One Night) is a lyrical, sensitive study of waiting and loneliness. It is in fact to the big credit of its first-time film director and writer, Emmanuel Dela Cruz, to have confidently worked at an atmosphere film with a rhythm of sustained lyricism till the film’s chilling climax, choosing to ignore the commonly perceived penchant of Hollywood-influenced local filmgoers for fast-paced action—a difficult feat any film director will attest to—

In the film, Jaclyn Jose plays the part of an ageing streetwalker plying her trade at Lito Atienza’s Baywalk. She has been contacted by a group of teeners who wanted a friend celebrating his birthday to get initiated into the adult world via a one-night encounter with an “expert”. The first time we see her, she sits alone at a table, idly playing a solitary game of constructing stories the many passers by suggest through their body language and facial expressions. Through her voice-over monologue, we learn several things about the character and how the mind works, foremost is her projection of loneliness and longing for someone she had abandoned earlier in her life, the way that probably the present group of youngsters who have initially contacted her on the phone decided to leave and summarily dismiss her services upon seeing that “the merchandise” is “unfit” as a birthday present—casually, mindlessly, insensitively.

Strangely, the birthday boy intuitively finds his way back to the lady of the night, who promptly invites him at her table. After an exchange of surface pleasantries that worked more at deeply probing each other’s internal landscape, the two part ways only to cross paths once again as if mysteriously by fate.

Here lies the tension that the film creates and sustains. It does not matter if the audience, the witness to their brief encounter, would finally be confronted by a disturbing disclosure towards the end for this is suggested strongly midway through the film, anyway. What matters more is that both film characters and the empathizing, identifying audience recognize by gut-feel the repressed primal scream in many young men and in many elderly women, if one swears by the oedipal tension which Freudian psychoanalysis says exists between Mother and Son. And one becomes very, very apprehensive, as a result. Yet one cannot fault the director for sheer shock value. The scenes and the characters are treated by his camera with respect, taste, and appropriate distance that one remembers only the loneliness and longing of the characters and the inevitable union of their respective emotional voids.

In this film, Jaclyn Jose, a great film actress who has been occasionally relegated to brief, support roles takes center stage once more and shows what made her the choice of the country’s premier critics’ group for the year’s Urian Best Actress award. Her hauntingly expressive face in maturity tells millions of stories, a lifetime-full of emotions in varied tones and shades of nuances. Even her hefty, matronly body—evoking a “Mother Earth” archetypal figure—and particularly in this film, her monotonic speech pattern combine perfectly to achieve an optimum effect that helps audiences experience vicariously her character’s dramatic encounters, both in low as well as in high intensity.

Providing a most appropriate foil to Jaclyn’s haunted face of harrowing experiences in life, is co-actor Angelo Ilagan’s tabula rasa of non-experience and cherubic innocence. This intimates the neophyte actor’s promise of a confident, Eric- Morris-“no acting please” performance approach, which would suit him well for he is himself, like his senior co-actor, blessed with a cinematic, expressive countenance.

In Sarong Banggi, Jaclyn Jose and Angelo Ilagan come face-to-face: the face of experience vs. the face eager for experience; the remorseful face of a sinful past confronted by a face that initially materializes to collect dues but eventually looks back with deep and affectionate understanding.

And it all happened in one night! – Jovenal D. Velasco

[etienne]

l like this film. angelo ilagan's acting is so natural.
i watched this movie last tuesday and i was surprised nga daghan ang hing watched.