Month: September 2010

Pinoy Sunday is a movie about a red couch. More specifically, it’s a movie about Manuel and Dado, two Filipino migrant factory workers in Taiwan, who dream of luxury and better days, and discover a discarded red couch on a Sunday, their day off. They decide to carry the couch back to the dormitory where they live so that one day they might be able to relax under the stars, drinking beer, stretched out on their couch, after a hard day’s work.

As the genre requires, they encounter many vicissitudes on their journey: a collision with a motorcyclist gets them picked up by the cops; a lady spotting them walking by with a couch sees this as an opportunity to cushion the fall of her son who is standing at the top of the apartment building threatening to jump; and enlisting the help of someone with a car puts them on a long detour to the middle of nowhere.

They are racing against the clock, since they must return to their dormitory before curfew at 9PM or else risk deportation. The couch, of course, is a symbol of luxury, and of hopes and dreams. It’s an impractical, heavy, clunky thing that they must carry across the city, with the hope of one day finding comfort and joy from it. Ultimately, this is a film about the difficulty of maintaining optimism and motivation against all odds, which seem to point towards your dreams being crushed. Continue reading “TIFF2010: Pinoy Sunday”

I saw Achero Mañas’s brilliant film, Noviembre, at TIFF in 2003 and absolutely loved it. It won the audience choice award and for good reason; it was a masterpiece. Eight years later and I still haven’t managed to find a copy of it on DVD and it certainly never received a theatrical release in North America. So when I discovered that Mañas would be bringing his latest film, Anything You Want, to this year’s TIFF, I jumped at the opportunity to see the master at work once more.

Anything You Want is a sad and poignant story of how Leo, a family-law lawyer in Madrid who spends little time with his own family, must cope with taking care of his four-year-old daughter, Dafne, when her mother, his wife, passes away. At first, Leo feels completely incapable of handling the responsibility. We watch him break down into tears in front of his father as he admits his fear and anxiety about taking on the role of both mother and father, when he was so used to having Alicia be the primary caretaker for Dafne. His struggle is exacerbated by Dafne’s grief and alienation from him: Dafne refuses to kiss him or hug him and wants solely to speak to and be comforted by her mother.

At first, Dafne is content to take on a “fake mother”. When Leo brings home his girlfriend, Marta, Dafne asks Marta to read her a bedtime story and lie with her like her mother would. Dafne is eagerly searching for a female replacement and Leo feels helpless, convinced that what Dafne needs is a woman in her life. He confides in his co-worker at work that he feels obligated to date for Dafne’s sake, so that Dafne can have a woman in her life. Ultimately, however, both Dafne and Leo abuse Marta’s kindness, too keen to pretend she really is a substitute for Alicia, and unwilling to admit to themselves that she is someone different, and so Marta leaves.

In an effort to get closer to his daughter and gain her affections, Leo agrees to begin to dress like Alicia, at Dafne’s request. It starts off small, with Leo acquiescing to a request from Dafne to have him put on some lipstick, as a comforting reminder of her mother. But the obsession grows. It is only through dressing up as Alicia that Leo is able to have a close and caring relationship with his daughter.

Achero Mañas problematizes gender roles by examining Leo’s approach. It is heartbreaking that Leo feels that Dafne cannot love him if he is a man, and equally so that he feels that the only way to be gentle and loving towards his daughter is to take on a female persona. Certainly, Dafne is missing something by not having a woman in her life, but is Leo really right to think that only a female could fulfill the role of caregiver? Is there not some way for him to maintain his identity as the handsome, masculine male that he is while still finding a way to tenderly parent his daughter? Continue reading “TIFF2010: Anything You Want”