Things have not worked out for Adam.
A Filipino immigrant living in San Diego and working in a dead-end security job, he lives with the daily reminder that he has not been able to make enough money to bring his mother and sister to the States.
Instead, they live in the filthy and dangerous Manilan suburb of Cavite with its horrendous slums and untold murderous alley ways. It is a place where disease and starvation cause humans to forget who they are and take up strange mantles in the hope of leaving.
It is a place where the very will to live shrinks under the shadow of the need to escape.
Within this microcosm is the Islamic-Christian struggle as it is played out in the Philippines. Unknown to most, this struggle is as alive and brooding there as in the Middle East.
American interests are constantly at work to support the dangerous and tenuous political connections necessary to keep this outpost open as a military base. When competing interests challenge the prevailing Christian caste there can be bloodletting.
This is a country not yet ready for democracy, and ripe for civil war. Revolutionary interests must be kept at bay.
Adam is drawn into the middle of this lethal conflict when he returns to attend his father’s funeral. On the way to his mother’s house he is kidnapped by a voice on a cell-phone threatening to kill his mother and sister. Adam has no choice but to comply with the mysterious and meandering series of commands.
Beset with guilt for his failure to bring his family to a better life in the US, Adam also lives with the Islamic religion, people and way of life he left behind. In the course of following the demands of the kidnappers he is forced to re-unite with his former homeland and his own Islamic past. He is also forced to revisit Cavite where we travel with him through alleys and passageways that are forbidden to strangers.
These are places where life loses its meaning and social strata are dissolved. With Adam, we take a bizarre tour to see the inner workings of a society forbidden to outsiders.
“Cavite” is a great example of low budget / no budget movie making. For those who love the taboo pleasure of vicariously spying into narrow passageways and barely closeted homes and lives, it is a guilty pleasure.
Filming through the back alleys and markets is executed with hand held camera and at a fast pace to the accompaniment of a largely percussive background. The twangy accompaniment (of the zither?) takes us back to the alleys and the dark and mysterious underworld of the Viennese sewers of the 40’s where Orson Welles’ fingers stretch up through the grate and then fall back, lifeless, into the churning miasma.
As the picture moves through abrupt twists and turns to the unknown, so is Adam’s memory opened to us. As the forbidden city unfolds so do Adam’s thoughts, once shut in and private.
We see furtive glimpses of Filipino life: a murder, the eating of a bloody, fertilized chicken egg and real, politically incorrect cock-fighting. It is good that the writer/directors didn't dilute or censor these scenes. Their unflinching nature matches the bald machismo of the people and their honest view of life and death.
The photography is imaginative and manages to emphasize the stark nature of the third world environment that somehow can be soggy and dusty in the same place; fertile and lethal at the same time.
If the hand-held movement is a little much after a while, that's low budget for you. The energy is there.
The sound track, supposed to be unsettling, occasionally crosses over the line to the annoying. The overall intent is laudable, but the high volume detracts from the picture when one becomes constantly on guard for the next snapping and banging. The dangerous penetration of the back alleys is exciting in and of itself, without the jarring soundtrack.
All in all, an excellent breakthrough effort by writers/directors Neill Dela Llana and Ian Gamazon, with Gamazon also playing the lead part.
Many of the other parts in the film were played by members of Dela Llana’s family, who also put the pair up during the ten days or so that it took to shoot the film in Dela Llana’s native city of Cavite, the birthplace of Filipino independence in 1898.
Without having roots there, no film maker would have survived such an undertaking.
Limited release USA May 26th MPAA not rated
Showing in LA and NY only at the following theaters (call for showtimes):
The NuArt (Landmark), 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., LA, 310-281-8223
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