Cinemanila 2010: CHASSIS Review
Adolfo Alix, Jr.'s Chassis opens with Nora (Jodi Sta.
Maria) ironing the school uniform of her daughter inside a modest house. The
house, perhaps a few square meters wide, consists of very few belongings, some
furniture, the ironing horse, cheap ornaments hanging on the wall, one of which
Alix's camera becomes fixated on because it showcases the ideal house. Nora
finishes her chore and thanks the owner for her kindness. No, this is not
Nora's house. She lives elsewhere.
Alix's camera follows Nora
as she crosses a wide cement gap that separates her neighbor's house with the
parking lot of huge container trucks. Underneath the chassis of one of the
parked trucks hangs a hammock where Nora's daughter is sleeping. Nora's husband
sleeps on the cold cement. This is Nora's home, or at least until the truck
drives off to one of its many destinations. She wakes her daughter, bathes her,
helps her into her uniform, and finally sends her to school. It seems that the
events of that morning have ripened into routine. Shockingly, normalcy has
inevitably crept into what is obviously a situation that can only be described
as both unjust and absurd.
With its opening of expertly
mounted visual cues, Chassis immediately
forces notice of the gravity of its oppressive milieu. Alix separates from the tattered
houses of the slums, clichéd by the dozens of films that are situated there,
and slides further and deeper into penury, focusing primarily on individuals
who have made homes and attempt to raise families out of parked trucks. Alix
overemphasizes the bleakness of his chosen setting, visualizing his setting in
monochrome, effectively removing any semblance of color from the sorry lots of
his characters and the place they live in.
The images Alix creates,
with the help of cinematographer Gabriel Bagnas, are astoundingly austere, more
stylized and carefully framed portraits of extreme poverty in the midst of what
supposedly represents a bustling trade economy than anything else. Chassis, if experienced only as a series
of moving pictures, feels like an album of black and white postcards of
Alix often shows Nora's
face, suspiciously serene despite her troubling circumstance, in close-up. It
is as if he commands from Nora's the same irony as he does from his milieu.
After all, both subjects, Nora and
Alix exploits both milieu
and subject, creating a film that instantly grabs you by strength of both its premise
and Sta. Maria's presence. However, the film attempts to go beyond observation
of the severe human condition, participating further by enveloping such
observations within a story that attempts to push gender discourse. Alix
basically paints a grim community where dominating males are unable to provide,
forcing the stronger women to prostitute herself for mere survival. The film's
debatable conclusion portrays Nora's revolt towards her severely iniquitous
predicament, bringing the film closer to being unduly didactic if not totally
academic, betraying ultimately any emotions already invested on the fate of the
film's female protagonist. Thus, Chassis persisted
as a powerful piece of cinema verite until
it mistakenly took that final-minute drastic turn for inexplicable shock to forward
a negligible and passé statement on the state of patriarchy in the
(Cross-published in Lessons from the School of Inattention.)