Review
Filipiñana is a powerful class satire whose plea for help comes from its numbness rather than audacity.
Isabel is a Filipino teen who just started working at an exclusive country club whose excess and waste cast a shadow over nearby Manila. Her new job promises to be monotonous and tedious until she's asked to return a wayward golf club to the country club president, Dr. Palanca. She's recently become fascinated by Palanca, and her journey to find Palanca reveals a dark undercurrent to the perfectly manicured golf club.
Filipiñana is shot in 4:3, and I don't think I've ever seen anything in that format as beautifully oppressive. Immaculate compositions highlight the golf course's manufactured beauty, with towering trees looming over tiny people. This is fake, manicured nature, all modeled after what the locals hope will compete with what they think the American version of these clubs is.
The movie is a black comedy that's the slowest of slow burns, luxuriating in its visual poetry as most of the characters sleepwalk through it (or so it seems). The characters are lethargic, even when experiencing joy, but it turns out this isn't so much lethargy as it is defeat. The monolithic steamroller of capitalism and its attendant waste has crushed the workers' will, who can see they are as replaceable as the trees on the course.
This will alienate some audiences, and to be honest, it almost alienated me. But then the movie ends with a sudden dark turn that reframes everything that came before. It ends with a finger pointed at the audience. Not because we are complicit, but because we can walk away. Isabel and the rest of these characters can't walk away, and they are trapped without help, dignity, or a voice. So it's no wonder they move through the world like zombies. Why hope for a life raft when no one would even care to notice you're drowning?
