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Finally caught this movie which all gay men in Metro Manila have been raving about in their blogs but which was so elusive it couldn’t be found in cinemas except in obscure and forgettable eerie places. So it was that I and a friend had to be in Binondo on an unbearably hot Sunday afternoon to supposedly do a food trip and walking tour, except that I’m such a good researcher I found all the best places to eat in and shop at but missed one little information about the place being dead on Sunday. So we decided to skip to SM Manila and crossed our fingers hoping the film would be showing there. I guess it’s how the movie advertises itself to its audience: by premonition. You see, dead Binondo = Ded na si Lolo. Yes, it was showing there.
As with all things that are usually associated with the dead in the Philippines, the movie basically serves a full dish of superstitions that we Filipinos continue to practice and at the same time try to do away with. Plot: typical lower middle class family in a rowdy neighborhood gets thrust into the rituals of the dead after father dies and gets mired in family drama about long held secrets and perceived hurts and offenses. Family is known in the neighborhood as full of drama, and the death becomes an occasion for the ultimate showcase of dramatic skills, with the characters portrayed as trying to outperform each other on who can best perform grief, sorrow, fainting, as well as pity and pain during sibling confrontations. Movie basically is a mirror of the culture around the dead, which is mostly funny. People are supposed to grieve, but they also use the occasion to flirt with their neighbor, make more money, celebrate, and gossip with each other. Movie also wants to suggest that lower middle class family often imitates TV melodrama, using them as templates or guides on cues on how to shed a tear, faint, or utter the most emotional lines. In a sense, grief is also as much ritual as is natural.
It was hard concentrating on the movie when the lights were really dark and the sound system third rate. And whilst the movie was about death, I was more concentrated about something that was so alive. Yes, with SM Manila, gays could very well cue for other kinds of “rituals”.
hahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!