Filipiñana

Peter says: “Winning the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the Sundance Film Festival, Filipiñana is that kind of slow-moving art film you might need to pinch yourself a few times to keep from nodding off.

“The film primarily follows 17-year-old Isabel, a Filipino tee girl at a country club, the members of which remain blissfully unaware of the poverty and water shortages being experienced outside their luxury putting greens. With an unemotive, blank stare, Isabel soaks up the routines of these idle rich folks and how little they care about the staff, or anything.

“With a constant soundtrack of cicadas chirping in the background, long stretches of unbroken takes, and characters who for the most part tend to be completely devoid of human emotion, this is the kind of film that seems purposely alienating. I suppose that is the artistic point: the golf course and its wealthy inhabitants are presented as emotionless beings. But that very seeming artistic intent, as an audience member, doesn’t make the film engaging to sit there and watch.

“I appreciated a number of the very calculated shot compositions – like when Isabel is suggestively framed by the beige dress pants of the golfer as she tees him up – but Filipiñana was another one of those arthouse endurance tests, presenting familiar ‘eat the rich’ themes explored in much more dynamic, entertaining ways in shows like The White Lotus.

“Isabel is a tee girl at an exclusive country club in the Philippines, catering to wealthy clients, mostly men, setting up their golf balls, and enduring their mundane or sometimes sexist chatter She becomes obsessed with one client, Dr. Palanca, and when given the opportunity to return a golf club to him that he left behind, begins a single-minded quest to find him. Her dark-skinned, indigenous background is run parallel to Clara a light-skinned, ex-pat visiting her uncle who is encouraging her to move back to the Philippines. She refuses to fall in line with is behavior, speaking kindly to the caddies, and treating other with respect, but at a crucial moment near the film’s conclusion, where usable surprising motivation is revealed, Clara’s is less triumphant.

“The exploration of class, the static settings, with people moving in and out of shots, the emotional reserve, and the leisurely pacing of the film are reminiscent of some of Michael ;Haneke’s work, especially with the darker components added in. It’s holding at 4 cats at the moment, but I can imagine that number growing upon a second viewing.

“Screened at the Brattle Theatre, IFFBoston2026, April 27, 2026”

Brett says: “An outstanding reminder from Rafael Manuel’s FILIPIÑANA  is that film language does not have a conventional vocabulary. The film delves into themes of classism, colonialism, and entitlement. The knee-jerk reaction could be to note that these themes have been popular in many current day films and TV series. Right from the get-go, however, Manuel makes it evident that the depiction here will be cinematically translated unlike any other easy, obvious, and often cartoonish versions. That is not to say the film steers clear of humor. Here though, it is darker, perhaps more veiled at times, and it builds up layered and varied sediments of derision rather than pouring an entire bucket over the audience’s head all at once. It certainly makes the audience work a little harder than the millions of dollars of production value that ironically goes into many other ‘let’s take down the rich’ avenues.

“So many modern stories about wealth, privilege, and exploitation—even ‘critical’ ones—cannot help themselves from luxuriating in the lifestyles they are supposed to be condemning. The wealthy in FILIPIÑANA are not so fantastical. Their lives of luxury are almost scoffed at, exhibiting strangely mundane experiences at the resort in the film, hollow, even mechanical at times. They drift along through rituals that are passed off as privilege in a way that is a sort of mirror to the workers’ ritualistic duties that are also must-dos, but of course not a privilege for those workers. Those resort-goers’ interactions with each other carry an air of self-deception. Instead of being included like many luxurious depictions in other mediums, the audience almost questions why they would want any part of it. The result is a view of the wealthy that is confusing instead of envy-inducing or inviting, as if to ask, how do they not see this in themselves?

“The film’s unconventional approach is in its visual language. It seems as if contemporary themes of bringing down the rich have conditioned audiences to think the best way to understand class is through spectacle and celebrity culture. The ‘bells and whistles’ of those depictions frequently become inextricably linked to their own supposed critiques. Instead of constructing a heightened playground of excess like others, Manuel sterilizes it and makes it spiritually vacant altogether. The compositions within are deliberate and require full control of the imagery. The static frames have to be exact, because they are galleries of landscape compositions and portraits on full display for several seconds of scrutiny—minutes even—before we ever get to a new shot, a new composition. Any misplaced gesture and anything out of alignment would be noticeable, as opposed to all the “sirens,” quick edits, and what is often busy-for-busy’s-sake thematic cousins to this work. Manuel shows full faith in the images themselves with little else competing for viewers’ attention. And it’s that bold decision-making that is part of what makes this film stand out.

“The golf course of the resort is likely the film’s most powerful metaphor, although one can pick apart many others that are present in the film. Altogether, the golf course is a microcosm for the socioeconomic transitions of the Philippines that are alluded to in the film. The workers maintain every inch of the landscape. They cut grass, they replenish that which needs replenishing, they preserve the paradise-like aspects. However, this perfect space no longer belongs to them. Nevermind the fact that for all intents and purposes, the workers are the ones who live there. For Isabel in particular, this character’s Ilocano heritage links her to the coastal communities facing the infiltration of development and displacement. Her land, her history, has been cultivated by one group—her own—yet consumed by another.

The geography of the golf course makes the dynamic all the more visible. The wealthy remain almost exclusively within the well-kept portions of the course and resort. They march over and through manicured fairways and pristine greens. But, as for the rough, the hazards, the more untamed islands amid the water hazards, those zones are on the periphery and left to the workers. Those laborers must battle through those course ‘obstacles,’ even though it’s the errant game of the resort-goers who cause these hazards–these margins of the course–to be worker-relegated zones. The only time one of the privileged would ever have need to venture to those areas is to dive into ‘out-of-bounds’ behaviors of their own, but in that case, those areas are out-of-view from any of their fellow upper class tourists, a blind spot, just as the workers who are there regularly are overlooked and invisible to the rest.

“The film is remarkable in that it’s not just another class structure critique movie. It’s the fact that it embeds the critiques in its formal language in a way that opposes extravagance. Like the static shots being revealed, the meaning is not in the excess, but in the absences, in the emptiness. It’s very refreshing to find out as an audience member if we can recognize exploitation and entitlement without being seduced by it first.

“4 CATS OUT OF 5“