After Vince & Kath & James, the second MMFF film I watched was Ang Babae sa Septic Tank 2
#ForeverIsNotEnough.
There’s something fresh about the
premise of this comedy. Eugene Domingo
plays a fictional version of herself; in this universe, she’s like the
biggest Filpino actress currently working in the industry. Her collaborators
from the first movie, direk Rainer (Kean Cipriano) and Jocelyn (Cai Cortez), seek her participation for their next project: a
solemn arthouse film that serves as a metaphor for Rainer’s own failing
marriage. Domingo accepts, but she
starts asking for revisions to be made on the film, starting with changing the leading man from Joel Torre to Jericho Rosales. As she continues giving “suggestions”, the intended movie essentially transforms into a thoroughly clichéd Pinoy-style rom-com,
clashing with Rainer’s artistic vision and personal motivations.
I had chuckles with this
movie. But it’s not as funny as I was
hoping it to be. There’s some cleverness
with the gag setup, though the execution isn’t always on the mark as it could
be. Thus, it doesn’t have a sustainable
comedic energy.
Its most hilarious sequence
involves Domingo wrapped in a towel, in a sauna, explaining the three forms of
doing a heartbreaking “hugot” scene. It’s
genuinely riotous, and my stomach should have ached from too much laughing. But it didn’t, because there wasn’t enough momentum
leading to that moment.
Aside from the “hugot” sequence,
another memorable moment of this movie is when Rainer finally had enough of
Domingo’s “suggestions.” It was the
culmination of the overarching theme of the movie, which is about the
objectives of filmmaking – creating a sincere, profound, and thoughtful work of
art vs. making a profit and delivering easy, shallow, escapist pleasures. There are times when movies are a balance of
both, but as a general rule, to achieve an aspect of one, an aspect of the
other is sacrificed. Rainer and
Domingo’s brief but effective dinner-time debate over this matter is somewhat
brilliant. The sympathy is supposed to
be on Rainer, but Domingo does make compelling points and rebuttals, ending her
argument emphatically with, “You want to fix your marriage? You don’t make a movie. You go to a counselor!” (paraphrased)
But two great, memorable scenes don’t
make a great, memorable movie. It’s
failed by unpolished editing that made the narrative flow feel disjointed. There’s even this scene where Domingo plays
the ukulele and sings the song “Forever’s Not Enough”… at full length (I think. It
was long that it felt that way). Showing
the whole thing felt unnecessary; cuts should have been made. Also, the movie ends abruptly, with no concrete
feeling of resolution.
Ang Babae sa Septic Tank 2 #ForeverIsNotEnough has some amusing
parts – and, again, two great scenes – but it’s really a disappointment as a
whole. The argument can be made that it
has an inspired premise and a thought-provoking theme – at least, on paper –
but, judged as a film in its entirety, it’s just… not enough.
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