Cinemalaya 2011: I-FUNERALS Review
Isabel
(Glaiza de Castro), a promising mass communications student, has just landed an
internship that none of her classmates, who are interning in television
stations and film production outfits, would envy. I-Libings, a company that
specializes in covering wakes and funerals for its grieving clients, does not
seem to be the proper place for Isabel's skills and talents. With only a lowly
consumer-level video camera to work with, a crew of untrained technicians and a
boss (Earl Ignacio) who is initially unimpressed with her capabilities to deal with, she treats her internship with
the company as some cruel joke that fate has randomly dished her.
Rommel
Sales' I-Libings (I-Funerals) starts off seemingly with very
little ambition. It initially concentrates on Isabel's experiences in her
internship, mining the unique nature of her work for nuggets of humor and
sizable doses of irony. While somewhat entertaining, the exploits of Isabela
and her workmates in and out of the funeral parlor, with camera on hand as they
manage to get the most effective angles of the wakes and interments or edit the
footage in the most efficient way, get tired and redundant. Thankfully, Sales
does not limit the film within the confines of Isabel's life as an intern in a
funeral video coverage company.
Apart
from being the talent that rots away in a company that she has deemed unworthy
of her, Isabel is also a bastard daughter of a family man (Rez Cortez). Her
weekends are spent with her mother (Louella de Cordova), wondering whether her
father will spend the night with them and getting used to the fact that her
father probably won't. Sales depicts this area of Isabel's life with
fascinating sensitivity, expressing the insecurities, angst and anger felt by a
daughter born and living under less than ideal circumstances with ample clarity
and believability. Those consuming emotions are all subtly communicated, just
waiting to explode, waiting to burst at that precise moment.
And
burst they did at that most precise of moments when all the film's incongruent
elements converged to ground the film's single emotional highlight. Isabel,
enveloped by both grief and frustrations, stands before her tormentors,
revealing with the apparent disgust the most damning truth that death has
conveniently shrouded. Isabel invests in that imperfect gesture, going against
tradition, manners, and etiquette. She commits to the perpetuity provided by
video recording the irreverence she was constrained to do, declaring to the
world the pains of her life. She's only human, and I-Libings is better for it.
Confused
whether it is a comedy, a drama, or a mixture of both, the film contains
elements that do not always cohere. It is very frustrating, especially since
the film has really momentous moments that are wasted by attempts at being funny
that never quite work. The film's biggest sin is that it chose to end with
another lousy bid at humor, betraying the abundance of emotions of the
immediately preceding scene for an ineffective punchline. I-Libings is a sorely uneven film, but if only for that detour from
the mundane concerns of intern life to tackle humanity's fragility within the
frame provided by death and mourning, everything can be forgiven.
(Cross-published in Lessons from the School of Inattention.)