World film project: Philippines
Jan. 19th, 2021 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livWe really struggled to find any films at all from Ethiopia. So we didn't make any progress on the project for three months, and eventually we gave up and moved to the next in the list, the Philippines. But at some point in the last couple of weeks the Wikipedia list we're relying on updated its estimates and now reckons the Philippines has more people than Ethiopia, so we're not yet out of order after all.
Anyway, the film we picked was Cuddle weather (2019), dir Rod Cabataña-Marmol. It's a film about the relationship between two sex workers, which I was unsure about when we were picking and frankly I'm still a bit unsure about having seen it. But it's a really sweet love story with some great acting from the two leads.
Cuddle weather almost feels like a stage play, in that almost all of it takes place in either anonymous motel rooms or the protagonist's apartment, so it's rather obvious that everything can be shot as studio set pieces. You do get some panorama shots of Manila, and a couple of street scenes and the lobbies of fancier hotels plus one yacht. But anyway, it's really tightly focused on the interaction between Adela, the experienced and jaded female sex worker who's trying to get out, and Ram, the male novice who asks her to mentor him.
It seemed to avoid most of what to me are the obvious voyeuristic tropes. It's not about a white knight rescuing the poor abused victim; indeed there is a back story about Adela trying to set up that kind of arrangement and it ultimately falls through because her rich client doesn't in fact respect her. It doesn't present misery and abuse as titillation, and it doesn't moralize about how terrible sex is, and it mostly isn't soft porn either. There were some scenes early on of Adela in bed with her clients that started to tend in that direction; I think the set-up would have been conveyed equally well by showing her negotiating or flirting without the explicit sex. That is in fact how Ram's work is conveyed, which is undoubtedly a gendered thing. Mostly it portrays sex work as a job that's a bit grim in many ways, and explores the extremely unequal power relations between sex workers and clients, but most of what makes Adela and Ram's life difficult is being poor, not the fact that they chose sex work over their other generally undesirable options.
Ram is just adorably nerdy, as well as being a clueless country boy. I love his completely brazen approach of asking Adela to help him get better at sex, and I love that he's a religious Christian who prayed about it and is confident that God approves of his choice of trade as long as he's faithful in his heart. I also really enjoyed how much the film emphasises that he genuinely likes Adela as well as being attracted to her. He acts like a proper friend to her, and he doesn't treat their friendship as a consolation prize compared to romance. I don't always get on with friends-to-lovers when it's opposite sex because it can so easily play into the idea that relationships develop through men persisting with initially unwanted romantic overtures. Cuddle Weather I thought did a good job of avoiding that.
Adela's arc is complex and I didn't entirely understand how all the glimpses of her life leading up to the events of the film really fit together. I liked the storyline about her changing her name, and her difficult relationship with her mother, and her goal of exiting sex work but finding it difficult to do so when faced with few better options. The classic romance beat of a big fight before the final HEA involved conflict over whether Adela was really going to stop selling sex, not because Ram is trying to control her decisions but because she herself is finding it hard to cope with a difficult decision.
We're in theory still looking for films from Ethiopia and DR Congo, but I think realistically we should choose an Egyptian film rather than get stalled again. Does anybody have any recommendations for Egyptian films? We're ideally looking for 21st century and not extremely violent or depressing.
Anyway, the film we picked was Cuddle weather (2019), dir Rod Cabataña-Marmol. It's a film about the relationship between two sex workers, which I was unsure about when we were picking and frankly I'm still a bit unsure about having seen it. But it's a really sweet love story with some great acting from the two leads.
Cuddle weather almost feels like a stage play, in that almost all of it takes place in either anonymous motel rooms or the protagonist's apartment, so it's rather obvious that everything can be shot as studio set pieces. You do get some panorama shots of Manila, and a couple of street scenes and the lobbies of fancier hotels plus one yacht. But anyway, it's really tightly focused on the interaction between Adela, the experienced and jaded female sex worker who's trying to get out, and Ram, the male novice who asks her to mentor him.
It seemed to avoid most of what to me are the obvious voyeuristic tropes. It's not about a white knight rescuing the poor abused victim; indeed there is a back story about Adela trying to set up that kind of arrangement and it ultimately falls through because her rich client doesn't in fact respect her. It doesn't present misery and abuse as titillation, and it doesn't moralize about how terrible sex is, and it mostly isn't soft porn either. There were some scenes early on of Adela in bed with her clients that started to tend in that direction; I think the set-up would have been conveyed equally well by showing her negotiating or flirting without the explicit sex. That is in fact how Ram's work is conveyed, which is undoubtedly a gendered thing. Mostly it portrays sex work as a job that's a bit grim in many ways, and explores the extremely unequal power relations between sex workers and clients, but most of what makes Adela and Ram's life difficult is being poor, not the fact that they chose sex work over their other generally undesirable options.
Ram is just adorably nerdy, as well as being a clueless country boy. I love his completely brazen approach of asking Adela to help him get better at sex, and I love that he's a religious Christian who prayed about it and is confident that God approves of his choice of trade as long as he's faithful in his heart. I also really enjoyed how much the film emphasises that he genuinely likes Adela as well as being attracted to her. He acts like a proper friend to her, and he doesn't treat their friendship as a consolation prize compared to romance. I don't always get on with friends-to-lovers when it's opposite sex because it can so easily play into the idea that relationships develop through men persisting with initially unwanted romantic overtures. Cuddle Weather I thought did a good job of avoiding that.
Adela's arc is complex and I didn't entirely understand how all the glimpses of her life leading up to the events of the film really fit together. I liked the storyline about her changing her name, and her difficult relationship with her mother, and her goal of exiting sex work but finding it difficult to do so when faced with few better options. The classic romance beat of a big fight before the final HEA involved conflict over whether Adela was really going to stop selling sex, not because Ram is trying to control her decisions but because she herself is finding it hard to cope with a difficult decision.
We're in theory still looking for films from Ethiopia and DR Congo, but I think realistically we should choose an Egyptian film rather than get stalled again. Does anybody have any recommendations for Egyptian films? We're ideally looking for 21st century and not extremely violent or depressing.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-19 10:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-19 11:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-20 07:47 pm (UTC)https://letterboxd.com/russman/list/ethiopian-submissions-for-the-academy-award/
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-22 06:53 pm (UTC)https://nfts.co.uk/african-cinema-fractured-identities