Dagitab

There is not much to do but surrender to Giancarlo Abrahan’s Dagitab (alternatively titled The Sparks), a film that holds captive its audience. It radiates in visual and textual opulence that only the deftest of hands can achieve. One scene in particular makes a perfect summation of the film as a fine work of both a technician and artist: a man and a woman, lying on-share, night-time sand, their bed, while waves crash against their skin; evoking an image of them as interstellar voyagers floating by a galaxy of winking stars. A warm voice warbles in the background, his words resonate in more echoes than one.

That scene alone is excellent; a thing of marvel—and worth one’s admission.

Yet the film’s distinction is with its real captors: Eula Valdez and Nonie Buencamino. In portraying their respective roles as professors from UP, both writers and both rational people involved in an equally rational relationship, they instill life to a couple whose connection with each other is thoroughly complex, yet feels certainly raw. “Maybe we’re the failures,” says Buencamino’s Jimmy, pointing the blame to their dedication to the academia, in a tone that is resolutely matter-of-fact. “Maybe we have failed because we have dropped out of life.”

But then, even the intelligent and the irrational, has not a dint of what is truly sought by the heart. Jimmy routinely treks the mountains to find the mythic sword sundang (his curious form of closure for a love once lost). His wife Issey, portrayed exquisitely by Eula Valdez, goes about the life of a literary professor, frequently reflecting on her seemingly insouciant relationship with her husband. Valdez plays Issey with an astute understanding demanded by the character; the daze in her eyes and the invisible weight on her shoulder never seem to go away.

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Abrahan, who co-wrote Hannah Espia’s Transit, seems more interested on capturing vignettes of the central relationship, very telling of whatever Jimmy and Issey may have previously shared. It is the kind of relationship driven with an understanding that time can only build for very long.

For a film with ‘sparks’ for its title, there is lack of priority for big-emotioned romantics, which, again, is the film’s tasteful distinction. At one point Jimmy takes Issey to ride with him and scream her distress at the top of her lungs, ultimately revealing that moments like these don’t fit to the film. They don’t fit to their relationship. To whatever they share. To others, perhaps it does; but to them, not.

It all circles back to a scene in which Issey explains to her godson Gab (played by Martin Del Rosario) that “some things, you love and they are yours forever.” It is not about moving on because they never really leave. Simply, it is about growing up and outgrowing the void.