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When I discovered that Dante Nico Garcia’s Ploning would be the official Philippine entry for the Best Foreign Film category of the 81st Academy Awards, I felt iffy about the whole idea of sending any Filipino movies to the Oscars in general. I’m no expert on Philippine cinema but the way I see it, movies designed to be commercially successful among foreign audiences have to be one of two things: either it will show nothing but exaggerated “squalor squalor squalor” (to quote Dr. J Neil Garcia) or it will show the Philippines as a tropical island paradise minus the depressing reality of squalor squalor squalor.

On the one hand, it can be argued that, yes, squalor squalor squalor is the way the rest of the world should see us because the reality of poverty is difficult to ignore. While I do believe that those who see the Philippines (either through movies or an actual visit) should also get a glimpse of the indescribable poverty plaguing the country, a movie that lingers too long on the poverty angle would be the socio-political equivalent of a horror movie. Except instead of zombies we have street children, lepers ten families in a shack, all producing the same shock and horror effect on the audience. It’s bad enough that they get to live under inhuman conditions; now we have to fetishize them and turn them into a freak show too.

On the other hand, you can also say, “Why must we be so negative when our country is so beautiful despite the poverty and exploitation? Let’s get away from all this negativity and show the rest of the world how rich we are in natural resources!” So local and foreign audiences get bombarded with postcard-perfect after postcard-perfect image of our beaches, mountain ranges, and rainforests (jungles?). And we get so bedazzled by all that beauty that we forget to ask ourselves crucial questions about audience, perspective, and intention. Who are the people who get to enjoy the beauty of the Philippines? Is it the Filipinos who live in those postcard-perfect areas, the Filipinos who eventually end up being employees of resorts? The Filipinos from the Manila who can afford to enjoy them? The foreigners who come to the Philipipnes to enjoy not just the country’s beauty but the Filipino/as themselves? When showing these images, who are we really making the country look so beautiful for? And for what purpose?

I bring this up because Ploning is one of those impressive, picture-perfect movies that could easily mislead audiences into thinking that life in the Philippines is quaint, easy, and peaceful. The cinematography was so well done that if you paused the movie at any point, the frozen picture would have look gorgeous on your living room wall. Based on the visuals alone, I could easily see why any Filipino would be proud to show Ploning to a foreign audience (hey look, we’re not all about squalor here!).

Warning: spoilers ahead.

Plot-wise and dialogue-wise, however, the movie was a huge disappointment. Set in the director’s simple, seaside hometown of Cuyo, Palawan, Ploning is a non-linear narrative centered around a quiet woman named Ploning (Judy Ann Santos) and her motherly relations with a young boy Digo. The movie begins with the grown-up Digo returning to Cuyo after a 25-year absence – but you’re not supposed to know that yet. He walks around town with a native guide and as he visits familiar places, flashbacks occur from the perspective of his five-year old self.

Technically speaking, the flashbacks and the cuts were very clean and fluid; plot-wise, it was a headache. Names and characters start popping out of nowhere and it took me a while before I figured out what was really going on, who was related to who, and in what way. So apparently Digo has a mother who can’t walk, and Ploning decided to be something like a surrogate mom to him. Towards the end of the movie, Digo accidentally gets lost in sea, a woman makes a cringe-worthy melodramatic monologue lamenting the death of her son (not Digo), characters start crying, and we discover that the boy Digo was rescued by a Taiwanese sailor and that he has somehow found his way back to Cuyo over two decades later.

The synopsis I gave above makes it seem like Ploning is Digo’s story, but most of the imagery is actually devoted to Ploning, who for some reason is always better dressed than the rest of the women in Cuyo. I don’t particularly like nor dislike Judy Ann Santos but I found her – or rather, her representation of the character – incredibly irritating. For one thing, her eyes were always wide with concern and kindness. Every time she looked at Digo or another character with those wide wide eyes, I half-hoped that she would get slapped for looking like such a tool. She also doesn’t say much except to give pithy advice about romantic love, God, and death, and I hated how the rest of the characters were always going on and on about how kind she is and how much pain she must be hiding underneath her quiet exterior. If Ploning is supposed to represent the Philippines to a worldwide audience, then Ploning (the character) is the representation of Filipino women. And I’ll be damned before I ever let this kind, simple, God-loving cliche of a Filipino woman represent me.

Reality check: Filipino women don’t really spend a lot of time
frolicking in flowered dresses

After the movie, director Dante Nico Garcia and two other crew members (the other screenwriter and the production designer, I think) came up on stage for an open forum. Only then did I come to appreciate what Ploning was trying to do – which is actually a bad thing. When you need the director to explain why this device was used and what that scene meant, the movie fails as a work of art because it couldn’t reveal the creator’s vision on its own.

One of the things that Garcia clarified is that they did not create Ploning with the intention of marketing the film to a foreign audience. Boy, was I relieved; I’d hate to have anyone deliberately portray Philippine “reality” in a way that would sell. Apparently, his true intention was to create a film spoken entirely in the Cuyonon language, which is being spoken less and less by the natives of Cuyo due to the influence of cable TV shows in English. He was hoping to make Filipinos more aware of the language and to help the Cuyonons feel more proud about the language by having an all-star cast speak like natives. I suppose the mass audience also explains all the unnecessary melodrama too.

The director’s second intention was to tailor-fit a movie to his longtime friend, the actress Judy Ann Santos. If she could not be Ploning, there would not have been a Ploning movie, he said. I disagree. Ploning the character is so flat, predictable, and lifeless; any Filipina with wide eyes and a flowered dress could have been easily played the part. No previous acting experience required.

Despite my misgivings about the film, I actually think Ploning might have a shot at getting nominated into the Oscars, if only because foreign audiences might find the cheesy dialogue and the melodrama quaint. Or maybe they’ll be too blown away by the visuals to notice. I only hope that they’ll be a smart, discerning audience who won’t end up idealizing the Philippines as a tropical paradise peopled with kind, God-loving, simple folk.