How director Joselito Altarejos sets himself apart via soft porn cinema

By Joel David

Filmmakers aware of their development constantly set for themselves new challenges, in the hope that they’ll be able to meet these goals and possibly set new, more difficult ones.

These stages could be detected in all the outstanding directors of the past, although with the advent of the age of digital production in the present millennium, a new type of goal-setting has emerged: one where the community of filmmakers, consciously or otherwise, embarks on attaining certain ideals as a collective.

So far two primary objectives can be tracked. The first, condoned and rewarded by prestige-granting critical groups, where the directors create conscienticizing works focused on poverty, packaged in self-consciously high-art treatments for foreign film festivals, preferably in Europe.

The second, more directly in line with the ideals of filmmakers in the Second Golden Age, involves the aspiration of directors to convey their film statements directly with the local mass audience using strategies such as genres, star vehicles, topical materials, and commercially available franchise assignments. Weirdly enough, it’s the critical elite that seeks to downgrade these efforts, based apparently on a twisted perception of the career trajectory of Lino Brocka, the country’s most internationally recognized filmmaker.

Contrary to most prevailing accounts, Brocka eventually broke away from his European discoverer and focused primarily on developing projects that combined political statements in mostly successful popular formats, before a vehicular accident cut short his still-thriving productivity.

Joselito Altarejos, by apprenticing with Ishmael Bernal, Brocka’s contemporary (and for many, his superior) and commencing his filmmaking career the year after Bernal died, may be counted as one of the country’s few direct links with celluloid-era cinema. As such, he managed to stand apart from the aforementioned collective trends, although he also figured in the specialized branch of queer film production that flourished during the early years of digital filmmaking, when inexpensively produced projects could be screened in old-style movie theaters, where gay male audiences could use darkness as an opportunity for cruising.

Unlike the average queer filmmaker, though, he worked with mainstream studios and, in a manner of speaking, prepared Viva Films for its successful recent foray into soft-core sex-film production.

Greatest Performance arrives after he made one more turn, into politically pointed film statements during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, burning a few bridges in the process. His latest film will surprise anyone who closely followed his last few exertions. It has no overtly queer character except for the lead female character’s cross-dressed maid, and no connection to political discourse except for an instance of extrajudicial killing.

Yet, reminiscent of his previous peak achievement, Jino to Mari (Gino and Marie, 2019), the situation is sufficiently queer without requiring anyone to state it outright, and the power play exercised by one of its male protagonists, as well as the pushback by women characters, will confirm to any viewer that patriarchy continues to exercise its unearned privilege in any corner of the planet. The Jino to Mari setting, a contemporary film production, is also where the major events of GP unfold.

Yet GP proffers something that no Altarejos work has foregrounded before, although it might take a second viewing to confirm it beyond the shadow of a doubt: the entire scenario is a throwback to Bernal, Altarejos’s mentor, in the sense that the proceedings unfold unmistakably as a comedy in tragic clothing.

Yvonne Rivera, a once-popular performer who put her career on hold for the sake of her marriage, has to return to production when her union fails, ironically with the same abusive director, Mar Alvarez, who launched her to stardom. On the set she meets Drew, a younger soundperson with whom she occasionally enjoys a quickie, who like her has to endure Mar’s temperamental outbursts. Mar openly flirts with Katrina, a bit player who fearlessly displays her skimpy attire and coquettish teasing, determined to attain fame at any cost.

The reflexive touches accumulate over the course of the plot, with the film’s production company acknowledged as the producer behind Ang Lihim ni Teresa, Yvonne’s comeback project.

When Drew idly watches a talk program, it happens to feature Altarejos himself, providing tips for a couple of industry aspirants. Yvonne treats him as her personal stress-reliever, but when she shows up to address her fans on a public video exchange, Drew reverses their dynamic by using her image as an object of lust.

A Bernalesque take of a troubled woman descending a staircase shows up in the film-within-a-film, and in a coda after Yvonne’s happy ending, dead characters return: was this from Yvonne’s past, or another of her many nightmares, or an event in a parallel universe? Altarejos, in a (real-life) message, resists from providing a definite reply, except to mention that the film’s producers are exploring opportunities beyond a Philippine release.

Joel David is a retired professor of Cultural Studies at Inha University and was given the Art Nurturing Prize at the 2016 FACINE International Film Festival in San Francisco. He has written several books on Philippine cinema and maintains a blog at Amauteurish.com. His latest book, a canonical coverage of the entire history of Philippine film production up to 2020, is titled Canon Decampment and will be out in a few weeks on his blog.