THE STORY – Tee girl Isabel feels strangely drawn to Dr. Palanca, the president of the country club where she works. However, after piecing together a violent picture of what lies beneath the club’s pristine surface, she realizes that what began as an innocent infatuation is actually rooted in a sinister shared history.
THE CAST – Jorrybell Agoto, Carmen Castellanos, Teroy Guzman, Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, Isabel Sicat, & Nour Houshmand
THE TEAM – Rafael Manuel (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
I’ve always been wary of golf courses. They’re the definition of “unnatural”: intensely manicured lawns and curated landscapes often are at odds with the organic structure of their environment. Filmmaker Rafael Manuel clearly feels similarly uneasy as his new film “Filipiñana” explores a Filipino country club, using the fancy leisure spot as a way to delve into class differences and the terrifying privileges that wealth can provide. Like the sport it depicts, it occasionally vacillates between being captivating and trying viewers’ patience, but its shocking conclusions make the long time spent teeing it up worth it.
The film follows two young women at opposite ends of affluence. Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto) is a tee girl at a renowned country club, responsible for handling the golf balls of the rich male clientele. And Clara (Carmen Castellenos), visiting from New York City, hangs around the course with her rich, powerful family. Manuel doesn’t deploy a typical plot, instead letting his characters move through the space of the setting, interacting with other players and employees. In doing so, both women separately begin to discover certain unseemly happenings at the golf course that, when pieced together, point to a pattern of ill intentions and hidden misdeeds.
The film opens with a shot from inside a tour bus, and the first sound we hear is of screams, as passengers react to the bus’s near-collision with a child pedestrian. Nobody, including the driver, says anything about it, and shortly thereafter, a cheery tour guide begins speaking to those onboard in an overly enthusiastic tone. This one moment serves as a warning for what will follow in this story about powerful people desperately trying to cover up terrifying acts with the illusion of civility. The aggressively pristine look and submissive behavior of the tee girls and caddies, as encouraged by those in charge, feels decidedly eerie. Smartly, the film doesn’t deploy menacing camerawork or tension-building music in order to sell this discrepancy between how the golf course looks and feels. Manuel’s filmmaking and the sparse screenplay do enough to subtly give the film its well-calibrated mood.
The world Manuel constructs for his characters is, much like golf courses themselves, deliberately structured and gorgeously realized. The film’s color palette is vibrant, with visually stunning motifs throughout, such as the pink uniforms of the caddies standing out against the lush greens of the course. And much of the film (wonderfully shot by Xenia Patricia) is center-framed, further highlighting the delicate, calculated way in which the unblemished golf course is run. The director also loves structured images of uniformity, such as one shot of a line of golfers all stretching and hitting their golf balls at the same time. Manuel’s form matches his screenplay’s message, with the lively, not-found-in-nature colors and oddly perfect blocking giving the film an uncanny quality.
The dramatic structure is intentionally vague, and it takes its time getting to what could be called a typical plot. The film is decidedly uninterested in an ordinary narrative, instead leaning on feeling, innuendo, and insinuation to tell its story. This gives the audience the impression of being at arm’s length from the truth, much like Isabel and Clara are, before aspects of what’s really going on begin to reveal themselves. And even these reveals are presented in such an understated way that, much in the way that those in charge of the golf course hope the patrons will react to them, it’s not always obvious what exactly is being shown or, usually, merely implied.
Rafael Manuel has made an unexpectedly unnerving drama with “Filipiñana.” The average moviegoer is unlikely to be able to, or even want to, get into its sparse, dramatically muted narrative, but simply for the unnerving energy it creates, the film is effective. Golf courses are evil, and using one as a site for a cinematic exploration of what rich people are permitted to do by society makes for a brilliant swing.
