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Lola (2009)

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: 17 Jul 2011 11:11:35
Lola (2009)

Lola (2009)
DVD5 (VIDEO_TS) Custom | PAL 16:9 (720x576) | 01:49:46 | 4,23 Gb
Audio: Tagalog AC3 2.0 @ 224 Kbps | Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama | 15 wins | France, Philippines

The prolific Brillante Mendoza, one of the few internationally acknowledged auteurs in this year's Tribeca, follows up Kinatay, the gang-rape-and-dismemberment outrage from last year's Cannes, with a gentle ode to two resilient Manila family elders linked by a crime. The title is Tagalog for "grandmother": Sepa (Anita Linda) tries to raise money for the funeral of her grandson, killed during a cell-phone theft; the murderer's granny, Puring (Rustica Carpio), dutifully brings mango and rice cakes to the boy in jail while mollifying Sepa's anger with pesos tied up in a dirty hankie. Though arthritic and weary, these two gray panthers offer a sharp, unsentimental portrait of cunning and determination.

Brillante Mendoza, named best director at Cannes for Kinatay (2009), is one of the strongest cinematic voices from the Philippines.

IMDB

After the infamy that accompanied Mendoza's "Kinatay" / "Butchered" at the 2009 Cannes film festival, I decided to see what all the fuss was about and catch his latest film Lola.

This is a social realist film that's attempting to capture something about modern Philippine city life in Manila. What we're shown here is commoditised life, every waking moment revolves around money and possessions. The sound design in the film is really well done, and that's one of the few things that the critics agreed upon about Kinatay as well. The movie opens during a horrible wind where a haggard grandmother goes to light a candle at the sight of her nephew's murder, he was apparently stabbed to death for his mobile phone, which the film implies happens quite a lot. It appears that in the Philippines there needs to be a complainant for a murder case to be tried, which seems quite barbaric by Western standards, where no-one needs to complain.

Lola (2009)

Whilst grandmother Sepa struggles to keep her family together and starts pawning possessions to keep an invalid family member alive, grandmother Carpin struggles to raise enough money to pay off Sepa and keep her son Mateo Burgos out of prison. It appears to be a perfectly acceptable solution in Phillipines society. In the background we see a game show on TV which is called "credit or debit". Everything is about money. Life seems very oppressive, Sepa travels on foot in torrential rain and gale-force winds, and has to cope with her arthritis, how she keeps going at her age is hard to know. Carpin has similar afflictions, has to make money by illegal street trading and stealing from customers as well as begging off of relatives.

Lola (2009)

So the film is quite bleak, the densely inhabited urban maze features fascist graffiti, street kids wearing t-shirts with logos such as "ALIEN SEX FRIENDS", and there are bag snatchers everywhere. There is one ray of light in the film though, at a family gathering, it is noticed that some fish are swimming in the water underneath the house, suddenly there are frenzied attempts to catch as many as possible, and suddenly everyone is helping each other and there is joy. It's a phenomenon that Dickens referred to as the gaiety of the slums, in A Tale Of Two Cities he described a barrel of wine cracking and gushing down the street, the poor scramble around the floor looking for even the tiniest trickle, filling whatever container possible, laughing and joking.

It's a testament to suffering, and I think a story worth telling, though who knows what good it will do.

IMDB Reviewer
Lola (2009)

….The story turns out to be about acceptance and forgiveness instead of being a mystery thriller about collaring the criminal. The implied lesson is that we are all capable of criminal acts if we are pushed far enough. As we see more and more into the family life of the killer we see how they are starving because of road construction that has crippled their hand-caret based transportation business. They are losing their meager possessions one by one as they struggle to support a son who is himself the victim of birth defects.

Lola (2009)

Great cinematography of pouring rain as the watershed decisions of life and death come to pass. The barrio is on the water and the funeral is even held in boats on the water.

Lola (2009)

In the end the two matriarchs have the fateful meeting in which they join in their sorrow and their hope for the future and do the best they can. The fact that they do it outside of the law is significant. Forgiveness and healing are not legislative mandates they are practical remedies for the inherently predatory nature of humankind.

Mendoza gives another solid and commendable work, finding beauty in the ugliness of the human condition.

Excerpt from Ron Wilkinson's Review
Lola (2009)

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Many Thanks to duder for original Portuguese DVD and to NedPlimpton for custom English subs.

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