Some spoilers ahead.
I saw Jay yesterday, and I think it deserved that Cinemalaya 2008 Best Film award. I found it to be intelligent, subtle, and solid.
The writer and director, Francis Xavier Pasion, was a senior Comm major when I was freshman back in the day. I think he was even a founder and the first president of The Loyola Film circle. So it's good to finally see his output, and a deftly made one at that.
Jay is the name of both a murdered gay teacher and the also gay TV producer documenting the aftermath of this death. And being one of those metafilms, it blurs the lines between truth, manufactured truth, and whatever the hell is left. My friends know that I have a bias against self-aware text. But Jay surprised me by being poignant without being annoyingly precious. For the most part.
One of the things that struck me about Jay was how the film was shot on a static, tripod-mounted camera, while the in-film's documentary camera was always moving and going for the money shot. In the static shots, the director even tosses out conventional blocking, and framing techniques allowing heads to be cut and the focus to be on anonymous, overlapping torsos.
I think it's a clever way to say something about the difference between the artificial beauty of manufactured truth and the artlessness of real life. The documentary footage shows a close-up of the mother mourning for her son in the morgue, bathed in warm, golden light. The film reveals this to be a reenactment. For the real event, the camera is set in a corner and we see a wide shot of the mother collapsing into a heap upon seeing her son's dead body in a fluorescent-lit, antiseptic morgue.
While this is all clever filmmaking, it's really the great dialogue and nuanced acting by Baron Geisler and Coco Martin that make Jay a gem. Combined with the stark imagery serving as backdrop, the humor and pathos that make for the authentic condition of the characters is clearly seen. All in all, good calls by the direk.
Yet, this film movie is slightly marred by, of all things, it's ending. I'm not going to spoil that, but I'll say this. This is the problem I have with self-aware text: I like how my favorite things, like books and films comment on life, so I get thrown off when these things comment on commenting on life. Jay's ending is one comment too many.
Jay opened the other day, and is showing in SM cinemas.
I saw Jay yesterday, and I think it deserved that Cinemalaya 2008 Best Film award. I found it to be intelligent, subtle, and solid.
The writer and director, Francis Xavier Pasion, was a senior Comm major when I was freshman back in the day. I think he was even a founder and the first president of The Loyola Film circle. So it's good to finally see his output, and a deftly made one at that.
Jay is the name of both a murdered gay teacher and the also gay TV producer documenting the aftermath of this death. And being one of those metafilms, it blurs the lines between truth, manufactured truth, and whatever the hell is left. My friends know that I have a bias against self-aware text. But Jay surprised me by being poignant without being annoyingly precious. For the most part.
One of the things that struck me about Jay was how the film was shot on a static, tripod-mounted camera, while the in-film's documentary camera was always moving and going for the money shot. In the static shots, the director even tosses out conventional blocking, and framing techniques allowing heads to be cut and the focus to be on anonymous, overlapping torsos.
I think it's a clever way to say something about the difference between the artificial beauty of manufactured truth and the artlessness of real life. The documentary footage shows a close-up of the mother mourning for her son in the morgue, bathed in warm, golden light. The film reveals this to be a reenactment. For the real event, the camera is set in a corner and we see a wide shot of the mother collapsing into a heap upon seeing her son's dead body in a fluorescent-lit, antiseptic morgue.
While this is all clever filmmaking, it's really the great dialogue and nuanced acting by Baron Geisler and Coco Martin that make Jay a gem. Combined with the stark imagery serving as backdrop, the humor and pathos that make for the authentic condition of the characters is clearly seen. All in all, good calls by the direk.
Yet, this film movie is slightly marred by, of all things, it's ending. I'm not going to spoil that, but I'll say this. This is the problem I have with self-aware text: I like how my favorite things, like books and films comment on life, so I get thrown off when these things comment on commenting on life. Jay's ending is one comment too many.
Jay opened the other day, and is showing in SM cinemas.
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