An OFW journey with a red couch

Director Wi Ding Ho put it bluntly when he thanked the audience for their patience. He must have been impatient himself, what with choir and production numbers, speeches, and a stretch of chikahan at the cocktails before we were ushered into the cinema. It was the opening night of the 12th Cinemanila International Film Festival, and Ho’s Pinoy Sunday was the opening film. It must have been strange to the Malaysian-born, Taipei-based director, this kind of festivity that seemed to go on and on. Then again given the possibility that a movie will not be liked, celebration must happen before it begins.

Yet there is reason to celebrate with a movie like Pinoy Sunday, and the audience could only be thankful they had patiently waited. For one thing, there was the cast of Filipino actors, a bunch of four that should make us proud. From Epi Quizon recreating the stereotype of the smiling happy-go-lucky Pinoy and proving that the better actor will not just have craft, he will also have enough of it to create an image that resonates; to Bayani Agbayani who proves here that he doesn’t need slapstick or inane commercial film to do some effective comedy. From Meryll Soriano whose affecting portrayal of the Filipina maid is one that’s wrapped in and is a perfect balance of speech and silence, compassion and distance, these balances a matter of survival; to Alessandra de Rossi whose presence and singing voice became the more tender portrayal of a life lived selling one’s labours, one’s self, one’s body. Over and above this cast of actors though, Pinoy Sunday is a movie written by Ho with Ajay Balakrishnan, which I wish a Pinoy had thought of, a movie about the Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) that actually shows how life elsewhere could possibly be enjoyable in the way cheap thrills are, because it is a life without too many choices. In Pinoy Sunday we don’t get the literal sadnesses that the standard commercial OFW movie gives us; instead it shows us some good ol’ Pinoy humour in the context of elsewhere, given the limitations and oppressions of living and working away from home. In this story of Dado (Agbayani) and Manuel (Quizon), two friends who arrive in Taiwan to become workers in a factory, there is much laughter and humor. There’s also the absurdity of it all, the kind that’s created without our knowing it, maybe because we live it every day. Dado is the more mature of the two men, with a wife and daughter in Manila, a girlfriend in Taiwan, and at the point of the movie’s beginning is in medias res: his love for the woman in his present, put into question by the truth(s) of his life in Manila, something that’s in his past, but is also in his future. Out of guilt, he shops for wife and daughter, filling up a balikbayan box to send home. The symbols of the man’s absence in the family, actually also a symbol for too many layers of guilt. Objects, we are told, always have meaning. Which is what Manuel insists on, as he is faced with the dream of having a couch, high up on the roof deck of their dormitory, one that’s within the factory’s walls, a space that’s home but is also prison: a curfew is strictly enforced by a Taiwanese guard who knows no English, but will be reason for a worker’s termination from the job and deportation from Taiwan – this possibility is what hangs over their head most days. Manuel barely understands the guard’s Chinese, but knows to give him betel nut as a bribe. Dado shakes his head: you are so reckless. Manuel dreams: look up at that sky riddled with stars, look at how endless that is. We need a couch.

And one materializes, a gift from God, Manuel says. It’s Sunday afternoon and they’re looking to nowhere, having some mango ice that speaks of Manuel’s broken heart, his love lost to this fact: his girl Celia (de Rossi) was nothing but a dream, she who had dreams of her own that didn’t include Manuel at all. Dado had just broken up with his Taiwan girlfriend, another Pinay worker Anna (Soriano), forgetting that it was her birthday. A red couch appears before their eyes, one that’s left behind by a Taiwanese couple, one that they decide to take home. It is nothing but a distraction from the truth(s) of sadness and loneliness that surround them both, separately. It is everything but that, too. Because as they carry the bright red couch across the city of Taipei, it becomes reason for conversation and confession. Because there’s only so much carrying one can do of a red couch, yes? Even less two people can do when all they’ve got is each other. So as the task of carrying the couch to their dormitory became more and more difficult, bringing Dado and Manuel from the police station to highways of the city, cheating death half the time and deportation the other half, they also end up walking the bowels of the city, plodding through the things that matter to them the most. Dado fears for family, for what they’ll become if he finds himself home; he speaks of hurting both wife and girlfriend, seemingly in equal measure. Dado knows no happiness, and is stuck in the perennial crisis of wanting to go home and needing to stay away. It’s because of this that Dado’s friendship with Manuel makes sense, free spirit as the latter is: Manuel speaks of no responsibility other than to himself, ergo the recklessness. His are loves that are as transient as the life he keeps in Taiwan, which is neither here nor there, because it isn’t home. His aren’t the big dreams of a better life, as it is dreams for the present: some kilig that only pursuing a girl can bring, stopping in awe of the sexy tindera at a convenience store, ending his days with a can of beer, up on the roof deck and thinking he owns the world. Because he does, in the sense that Manuel’s world revolved around that red couch on this Sunday that’s precious to every OFW. Because Manuel does own the world, in this fit of wanting a dream fulfilled at all costs, carrying the couch as close to his dormitory as possible and almost across a river. With Dado of course begrudgingly helping out, though slowly but surely enamoured as well with the most basic dream of making life a wee bit better up where they live.

And right there, with that couch carried between them, it was clear that there wasn’t much here but this, and there was every reason to keep going with the dream of the red couch. After all, the bigger dream fails because it exists with the oppressive conditions of being OFW. The latter creates nothing but the conditions for sadness; the smaller more immediate dream would bring, without a doubt, a great amount of joy. There is much to lose in both dreams. But some things are apparently worth losing. Meanwhile, here in Pinoy Sunday, we aren’t only given a movie that’s worth watching, but one that local portrayals of the OFW story must learn from. Most importantly we’re told that the absurd is only such for those who don’t know of this life, as lived on the edge, with everything to lose, and nothing in your hands, but a bright red couch. The 12th Cinemanila International Film Festival runs until December 5 2010, with an extension from December 6 to 8, at Robinson’s Galleria Movieworld. Check out http://www.cinemanila.org.ph for screening schedules. Photos are press release photos for Pinoy Sunday. Check out http://www.pinoysunday.com.