Rafael Manuel’s ‘Filipiñana’ exposes violence beneath a beautiful surface

The film’s combination of wry comedy and social observation is filmed, somewhat atypically, in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Aesthetically, Filipiñana feels compressed, but to the narrative’s benefit. Manuel and I broke down the intention behind that creative choice, as well as Agoto’s performance and presence in the film, in a recent conversation.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Andy Crump: What influenced the choice to go with the 4:3 aspect ratio? That, to me, is such an important part of the movie, but why go with that versus a traditional aspect ratio for shooting this film?
Rafael Manuel: For two reasons. The first reason is that when you see the setting of a golf course, you think anamorphic to get the vast expanses of greens; go as wide as you possibly can. That would've been the obvious choice. What we realized was what you lose in 4:3, you gain in verticality, a very useful visual tool for communicating power difference, in that you can put people above in frame and below in frame. Because of the crushed frame, you can shoot through things, like the shot of Isabel between the legs of the golfers. 

The second reason is that I wanted it to be very obvious that there was a frame. This comes from the tradition of landscape painting and landscape photography. There's this British academic, Simon Schama, and he talks a lot about landscape. One thing he said that really stuck with me is that landscape is culture first and foremost before it is nature. It's a projection of human imagination onto rock, onto grass, onto sand. After reading that, for me, the question arises: whose imagination is being projected onto this land? It's definitely not the laborers in these landscapes. A farmer or a laborer, a caddie, has a very different relationship to a landscape than the person capturing the landscape. So the frame itself is a communication of power, and also me acknowledging my power in being able to frame this landscape. It’s a constant reminder to both myself and the audience of this power.

AC: I’m glad you mentioned the shot through the legs of the golfers, because that shot both drives home the social and class dynamics—(the caddies) are literally beneath these wealthy men who are there to golf—but also introduces sexual and gender dynamics. I feel like you're communicating that these dynamics are inseparable, and I wonder if you could expand on that, especially thinking about the crush Isabel develops on Dr. Palanca, and how that curdles over time the more she understands who he is and what he's done.
RM: That shot was the genesis of the entire film, you know? I like how you talk about the inseparability of social, political, class, and gender politics, because they are inseparable. It's the global north, the global south, east, west, man, woman. At the end of the day, we're talking about power dynamics no matter who's on top and who's on the bottom. 

I love Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He was making films in the '60s, the '70s, the '80s—and they were queer films—but first and foremost, they were films about power. Everyone was exploiting each other. This interrelation is important, because no matter where in the social strata you find yourself, there's always a power difference that exists. You just have to look hard enough. There's always a power difference that you enjoy and a power difference that you're being subjected to.

AC: And this is an interesting location to explore those dynamics in. It's so beautiful, so serene. Every shot here pretty much could be put in a frame and hung up on a wall, but there's so much ugliness at the same time. What brought you to this particular location for unpacking these dynamics?
RM: The colonial aspect. The first golf courses in the Philippines were on American military bases. Relating it beyond the global south, the global north, is the whole issue of gentrification. What is a golf course but the gentrification of land? You're taking something that's wild and you're imposing man's will on it to make it safe and beautiful for people. My mother gentrifies her garden. This takes place on a golf course in the Philippines, but it could be a shopping mall in Dubai. It could be High Street in London. It could be a beach in LA. If you look at it through the lens of gentrification, you really see that the violence that is particular to this world is universal. 

For me, it was really important to communicate the universality of violence, especially as a Filipino filmmaker. Because a lot of the gatekeepers of financing for Southeast Asian films are white Europeans, there's a particular image of my country that gets propagated throughout the world: of poverty, reenactments of murder, of rape. While these are all true—violence is very much rampant in my country—I think because these images of violence are so strong, and almost pornographic to some extent, they conceal the invisible structural violence at the root of it all. It’s easy for a Western audience to watch these images and say, "Oh, how sad. Oh, that's terrible. We should do something about that part of the world.” But, yeah, by working on your part of the world! It all trickles down. So, my goal was to make the violence of the third world relatable to the West.

AC: There is a way to take this as a universal story, and to think about how it applies to other parts of the world. But when you were making the movie, it must have been very personal for (Agoto), and I wonder what that was like for the two of you.
RM: With directing actors, I really feel like 70-80 percent of the work is casting. After I cast the actor, then we build the characters together based on their life experiences. My directing style is that I ask them to act the minimum amount possible. It was really interesting, because yeah, Jorybell comes from Ilocos, and Ilocos is such a historically politically charged region of the Philippines. The fact that she came from there later on allowed me access to the storyline of Dr. Palanca being also from Ilocos.

Then came the theme, which I love, of tribalism in the Philippines and regionalism in the Philippines, which speaks to a broader colonial strategy of divide and conquer. It puts into focus the fragmented nature of our society. We are an archipelago, 7,000 islands, and so we are very fragmented as a people, and because of that, it's hard to build a unified cultural identity.

AC: Fragmentation is not something that comes to mind for me (as a Westerner), but it’s interesting to hear you speak about it, especially when we've been speaking about the quality of universality. Do you have belief in this movie's power to bring about some degree of cultural unity? Does film have the power to bring some of those fragments together?
RM: I'd like to describe myself as a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist. Even if it doesn't happen now, maybe (it will) later on. For me, it doesn't have to be this film, you know? Maybe someone will watch this film, one of the audience members in the Philippines will watch this film and make another film that will be that film. It doesn't matter so much if it's this film, as long as a step is taken in that direction. I guess why I'm nervous about showing it in the Philippines, is because of this fragmentation, of colonial mentality, and through no fault of their own. There are access issues. We have one or two independent cinemas in Manila, so they're not used to seeing world cinema. They're not used to seeing alternative ways of constructing a narrative structure. 

So I really have no idea, because of the pacing, because of the minimalism, how they're gonna react to it. Lav Diaz is huge in Europe, but no one watches his films in the Philippines. The fact that a large amount of people in the Philippines are going to see it is a win for me, and how they react is how they react.