The brilliance of Two Left Feet

What might be ultimately ironic about a movie that has Philippine poetry and original music, not to mention dancing, is the fact that it's the silences that succeed at making it brilliant. Because there is so much to say here, so many words that may be spoken, many others that might be used as a matter of controversy and publicity. But the words in Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa (written and directed by Alvin Yapan, executive produced with Alemberg Ang) are few and far between, barely owned by any one character, even as each of them is so deeply complex and dynamic. This silence is effortless, one that's beyond explanation, one that's matter of fact, a matter of course, because it is so palpable that words are unworthy. At least our words. Because our women poets speak beautifully here as they always have, yet layered with music if not tempered by speech, it's made new and different; in the hands of a teacher-character it is nothing but familiar. Here, the process of dissection, the act of tearing the poems apart, are shown to be about acknowledging its silences. The teacher of literature, Karen (Jean Garcia), is enigmatic for a reason, but effective like every literature teacher should be. She reads poetry and it comes alive, she asks questions about it with certainty. She is unsurprised by any of her students' assertions, even as these are necessarily about sexuality and desire, love and intimacy, the act of gazing. Even as she is the object of that gaze.

That Karen is unperturbed becomes part of her enigmatic persona; that this ties cleanly together with the fact of her silence(s) as teacher is the gift that Yapan's characterization gives us, acknowledging without romanticizing the fact of teaching's contingent and necessary loneliness, one that isn't a sad thing at all. Karen's quiet solitude shines with possibility and freedom, even as it becomes fodder for students' presumptions about her, even when all it means is that she will never be known. At least not until she - always in control - lets this role as teacher be subsumed by other roles that are bigger if not more intimate. In this case, she is also dance teacher, separate and distinct from her life within the classroom. This other life, that other role, is intertwined with literature in this movie's decision to layer poetry with body, words with dance, and insist that the woman as teacher, as dancer is also the woman as body. Here lies a heightened intimacy that isn't about poetry's words, but about her own body against a student's, her own self against theirs. As teachers, there's a romance we keep with our students, one that's about lines drawn. In Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa, that line is rendered questionable, even as it is kept by a teacher that's always distant. Because it's her distance that allows her to see infatuation and desire, directed at her or between students. Dennis (Rocco Nacino) and Marlon (Paulo Avelino) enter a friendship premised on Karen's existence in their lives, one that forces Karen to step out of her role as teacher and quietly acknowledge the dynamics of sexuality that exists in the two boys' friendship. But the boys don't use words for possibility and pain, as they enter a relationship with their bodies, separately and together, the kind that dancing requires, the kind that deems the body malleable, sees it as truth. In those dances, their relationship is real; in their conversations about poetry what matters is the unsaid. The conflict is not in what happens in this movie, but in what is rendered mute by their bodies. Here is where both Nacino and Avelino deserve to be praised, for having the daring to learn their roles enough to capture character nuances and intricacies; for having the daring to do roles that are so sexual and intimate, and knowing to play these with nary a discomfort. Nacino's portrayal of the one whose desire is muted by the fact of the other's heterosexuality is nothing short of intelligent and luminous. Garcia's Karen is in a league of its own, where as teacher she was believably open and mysterious, kind but strict; as dancer she was her body, aged yes, but lithe and lean, with a eyes that speak of absence and loneliness, gestures that were of liberation and freedom. I wish I could wrap the manner in which this character echoes into reality, touches another teacher's life, and give it to Garcia. But it is the dynamism in dance and music and poetry that is the star of this movie as well. Between the choreography of Eli Jacinto and the music by Jema Pamintuan and Christine Muco, alongside singing by a cast of voices that knows not the commercialized lack of emotion and daring, the poetry here isn't in motion as it is alive, as it is ours, as it is owned by this woman who teaches it, but more importantly by bodies that live it. This teacher lives it. With its contingent sadnesses and oppressions, its loneliness and solitude, its knowledge of freedom, its decision to remain captured if only by poetry and music, by dance and the limits of the body. Two left feet? Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa turns that into one movie that resonates on the body, in your spirit, in utter brilliance. - GMA News Films featured in Cinemalaya 2011 are running at the UP Film Center from August 2-5. For reservations, please contact 09172990318. Cinemalaya Goes UP 7 August 2 Teoriya, 5pm Bisperas, 8pm August 3 Isda, 5pm Busong, 8pm August 4 Shorts A, 5pm Patikul, 8pm August 5 Shorts B, 5pm Best Picture-New Breed, 7pm (SOLD OUT, NO SRO TICKETS) Best Picture-Director's Showcase, 9pm