tomorrow may be different
by
Douglas Messerli
Crisaldol
Pablo (writer and director) Bilog (Circles) / 2005
The
poster for Filipino director Crisaldo Pablo’s 2005 film Bilog (Circles)
looks as if it was one of the counterfeit porno films that the hero of the
work, Cris (Archie de Calma) daily sells—along with candies, perfumes, fruit,
beaded necklaces, and even crude drawings of wedding dresses, in fact almost
anything anyone visiting the vast Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City of Metropolitan
Manila might desire, including desire itself.
The somewhat corn-ball structure of this
film—at the beginning of the movie, Chris has just been robbed in a jeepney he
is riding by men who are now each holding knives to this throat; and throughout
the rest of this rather longish work, he re-imagines his last few days to help him
explain why this is happening to him, certain, he believes, to be his last
moments on earth—doesn’t exactly allure us into the film we’ve just begun. And along
with the poor visual quality of the cinema itself, and its fast-shifting repertoire
of a vast number of characters perhaps explains why mine will be apparently the
first and only review for a while of this work in the US.
Yet, Pablo’s film is so much complex and dramatically
significant than all of these simple flaws that one also wonders why this film
has not become a kind of underground cult favorite. In Chris’ world, fruit sellers,
business-men-and-women out to enjoy the nearby park’s deep shadows,
prostitutes, both male and female, who hide in the depths of the park, and just
plain naïfs having just arrive in the Philippine capitol directly from small
isolated communities, as well as numerous others come together to ignore or
encounter one another.
Moreover Chris is not just a simple
con-man carrying his large canvas bag of tricks, but is determined to help
these individuals find housing, love, and acceptance in a world where such
tangibles and intangibles are nearly impossible to find. For a small percent on
a loan, he’s ready to personally take on one of the earliest country boys whom
he rubs against, the beautiful Deo (Keno Alejandro), who has followed a smart
and savvy female social activist to the city, personally escorting him to a kind of flea-bag
dormitory, where men live three to a room, sharing bathing kits (which consist
of little but a pan and soap) and even bed-space.
Yet, Chris has knowingly bedded this new
straight boy with two gay men, in particular the serious-minded Rod (Rudolph
Segundo), negotiating a smaller rent for Beo with the hope, it appears, that he
may one day have sex with him. Yes, Chris is gay, but not the handsome young
men with whom he surrounds himself without ever throughout the film being able
to fulfill his desires. As Pablo’s closing theme song puts it (with lyrics by
Pablo and music by Ato del Rosario): “I’ve gotten used to failed relations.”
Yet, for all of Chris’ seeming cynicism, the same song ends “Tomorrow may be
different.”
Throughout the film we see Chris
interacting with dozens of individuals, often taking advantage of them or
simply accepting their dismissals of his peddling services; yet he knows a
broken heart or, just as importantly, one soon to be broken when he sees it,
and is often willing to zip up his bag of tricks and work, often without a fee,
to help fan the flames of desire.
One such figure whom he takes under his
wing, is Rod, who has put his own life—and his gay sexual urges—on hold while
he works as a office boy for a company head who later, as has a recent
government communique, openly remarks that fags are a true danger to the
society. He works in a world from which he has locked himself away, rejecting
the temptations every desire and sex, or
even a simple beloved mango for breakfast, so that he can save up enough money
to send it back home to help out his ailing brother (who eventually dies of
stomach cancer), his other brothers and his mother and father, none of whom, he
suggests, seem to be able to care for themselves.
Chris argues that he should at least
release his forbidden desires once in a while, if not daily. With Rod
eventually does when Deo, discovering that the girl of his dreams—who
incidentally has tried to make him realize that there can be no relationship
between the two of them—seeks consolation, after Chris clears the room of the
other boarder and any want-to-be voyeurs, in intense sex with boy.
When Deo himself becomes a kind of apprentice-activist,
the story focuses on others of Chris’ friends and enemies, the latter of whom
keep him out of the house they own and away from visiting other clients. The friends
seem increasingly to made up of male prostitutes who find clients in the park
or, when it closes at midnight, on the street.
One of the most handsome of them is
Paolo (Rezíven Bulado), who has apparently contracted AIDS, and who a couple of
times Chris saves from jumping from freeways and other dangerous spots. Paolo,
however, eventually enters the park late at night, strips off his clothes, and
from the top of one of the park buildings, jumps to his death.
At other times, the entire community,
fruit sellers and gay boys equally, are accosted by police raids, one of which
leaves one of the seller’s young daughter almost dead as, left alone after the
police have arrested her mother, she wanders out into traffic. She is saved by
a local doctor.
Yet good things also begin to happen. A
doctor who daily comes to the park on her lunch break, reencounters her former
lover, who has everyday since she has rejected him returned to the same spot
with the belief that eventually she will return; their love is reignited.
Two warring mango sellers, forced to
rush away from yet another police raid, help each other, one knowing of a place
where they might temporarily hide with their wares. Simply out of appreciation
for the help of the other, the least comely of the two women unexpectedly
kisses the other seller, who admits that she rather liked the kiss, hinting
that these to former enemies may become lesbian lovers.
Deo again runs across the joyless Rod,
and tells him of his love for him, and his desire to again have sex.
Even Chris is “saved,” as a wedding
dress obviously meant for one of his would-be customers, which has floated out
of the jeepney in which he is being held captive, is spotted by some of his
customers and protégés who quickly catch up with the jeepney and demand that
the doors be opened, allowing for his escape.
Pablo’s film, filled as it is by lost
souls, also reveals that just the smallest bit of love and dreaming for them
changes everything. As poor and desperate as most of these individuals are, “tomorrow
may be different” as they circle round one another in search of their desires.
Los
Angeles, June 27, 2020
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (June 2020).
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