Malay Javier’s Hindi Sila Tatanda is an indulgent play at sonic and visual euphoria. The film has earned that merit. It is technically subversive, too; beginning as an innocuous slice-of-life coming-of-age with scenes that are mistakably Sundance-mold, until it plunges to a more sci-fi/genre film vibe, and finally pulls back. The aesthetization and subtext inspiring the film’s narrative is curious. But the narrative in itself is quite sluggish in order to communicate these inspirations very well. You get that Javier is a skilled and exacting creator, but also doubt if he has to say much.
That said, the film is not completely empty; windbag, perhaps, but there is also a sense of exactness to it that is alternately repulsive and reassuring. It finds a quartet of friends who take a trip to Zambales for their own individual reasons—to kindle old flames, to burn down present ones, to thaw out the frost, to feel a touch of heat—but they are bound by one thing and one thing only. Affection. It is a sweet sentiment to make. It is imposed in the film that affection is a feeling most primal that even an otherworldly species has only it to latch on. Yet, with that, even at a whipping sense of peril, the film proves curiously disaffecting, perhaps due to its sparse narrative and characterization.
Worth to mention, however, is the arc of Dawn Jimenez‘s character Andrea, who finds herself engaging in intimate relations with an odd looking man, an otherworldly entity as posed by the film early on. The arc in itself echoes the conclusion of Alvin Yapan’s Ang Panggagahasa Kay Fe (eng. title: The Rapture of Fe, 2009) in which Irma Adlawan’s character chooses to leave with her mythical lover. Yapan’s resonates various social truths: masochism, domestic violence and rape.
For a film with such an intriguing premise, Hindi Sila Tatanda settles on juvenilia, rendering its title most appropriate, but when it tries to grow up and actually tries to carry a message across, it flounders.
The film is better in its quieter moments. The quartet of friends reflect on the kind of friendship that is relevant and true to us youth today, the kind that is resolutely irresolute. The four are intertwined by their affection for each other. They are conflicted with one another, but refuse to talk about it. So they talk Alien Shit. A drag, frankly, but the central friendship in the film resonate something nonetheless deep and true. In the end, the quartet of friends are Peter Pans under their own skin of which they could not get out.
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HINDI SILA TATANDA (2014)
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Malay Javier / PH
Drama, Sci-Fi / R-13
Screenplay: Malay Javier, Pam Miras, et al.
Cast: Kean Cipriano, Ketchup Eusebio, Mara Lopez, Dawn Jimenez…
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“May mga tao lang
talagang sarado…”
~Andrea (Dawn Jimenez)
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