“LOSING IT” (By Katrina A. Holigores)

ROGUE MAGAZINE, Gallery, August 2007

“Losing it. Journey into the heart of madness with Unitel Pictures’ atmospheric psycho-thriller, Blackout.”

WE ALL HATE LOSING THINGS, be it an object of great sentimental value, a cellphone that contains all the numbers we need to live by, a job, a loved one. Once you name it, loss is never easy to deal with. Losing our minds and losing our touch with reality is probably the most frightening of all, and our descent into madness is made even more dramatic if we are unaware that we are “losing it” in the first place.

The over all mood in Ato Bautista’s second feature film, Blackout, in all about one man’s foray – or fall, rather – into the limbo of what is real and what is not.

Robin Padilla, who plays the lead character, Gil Blanco, is a sad, almost pathetic creature, whose alcoholism has cost him dearly. His wife has abandoned him, and he is left to fend for his son and run a couple of rundown units in his compound. He regularly suffers from blackouts, waking up disoriented and being able to tell what has just transpired, even just hours ago.

This 85-minute thriller follows Padilla’s characters he discovers the dead body of a little girl under his car and his cover-up of it, all the while wondering if he did murder her. Things get complicated as the little girl’s mother, Belen (played by Iza Calzado), goes looking for her, enlisting Padilla’s help and that of a strange tattooed tenant who constantly pops up asking for things to be repaired and for the septic tank to be checked due to a foul smell emanating from it.

I enjoy watching thrillers in general, but I found the overall mood of the film a little too heavy for me to get into the suspense. First of all, I am not a big fan of Robin Padilla, and I felt that the overplaying of his alcoholism and depression was a little too in-your-face. It was obvious from the very beginning that he was suffering numerous maladies, but I didn’t feel we needed to drive the nail in every single time.

Iza Calzado, who is normally a subtle actress, had to portray a lady with a hint of madness in her. The thing is, from her very first scene, it was already obvious that something was “wrong”. Regarding the strange tattooed resident (played by Elmo Redrico), one doesn’t really have to watch the movie to imagine how the strange tattooed resident looked and what kind of character he portrayed. I’m not saying that every character has to be likeable, but there was nothing about any of the characters (save for the little boy Nino, played by John Michael Reyes) that made you want to say and really get into the story. In other words, midway throughout the film, although I was intrigued by the chain of events that was occurring, the long, drawn-out scenes of Padilla’s character made me really not care about the outcome.

There are certainly some bright points in Ato Baustista’s efforts, however. The twists and turns in the plot are well thought out, and the interspersing of “black out” effects within the story to further enhance the passages and slips between the here and now (sometimes real, sometimes not) are effective. I thought that the flow of the movie was smooth, with great transitions between perceived reality and what was really going on. In hindsight, certain nuances in the film made more sense than while I was watching it – which showed that the director and screenwriter are clever, and perhaps, if orchestrated in a different way, the film would have been more powerful.

It is also worthy to note that the film is far removed from many of the commercial options available in local cinema today. Baustista remains one of the filmmakers to watch out for, and it’s good to know that a production house such as Unitel still believes in taking risks by producing cinematic fare that is thought provoking and unexpected.

I do hope that this kind of storytelling will begin to pervade the local movie industry, at least in terms of provoking another kind of film to watch and without having to always rely on known stars to pull it off. It would be great if celebrities that had more “pull” could get involved in projects such as this – which, when all is said and done, are at least valiant attempts to bring something different to the table.