COTE D’AZAR, France – A bevy of Filipino films has invaded a much-underrated alternative film festival set in this sleepy town where nothing much happens, 14 kilometers from the glittering city of Cannes.
The Canned Film Festival hosts independent works rejected in Cannes, mostly avant-garde, post-modern versions of top Hollywood films.
Entries only have cult followers because the productions are certifiably awful. But, as world denounced film critic Billy Akin notes, “They’re so bad, they’re good.”
The following Philippine productions are top contenders for the Greased Palme d’Or award:
In a world where ambition and greed can only be satisfied by more ambition and greed, comes a gripping motion picture about ambition and greed. From UNA Studios comes Swindler’s List, an epic historical drama based on real life. Re-live the tribulation of fraudster Janet Napoles. Feel the pain of an incarcerated woman whose only wish is to save her three senator friends and her own neck from merciless justice.
Janet desperately throws in dozens of extra names on her list of kickback beneficiaries, releasing several versions of it just to make things interesting. “I wish I could’ve released more lists to save more friends,” she agonizes in the end. Confused investigators take years separating the innocent from the guilty, dragging the investigation into 2016, when a new president (played by J.J. Binks, the breakout star of the “The Unbearable Likeness of Binay”) can pardon Janet and her co-conspirators. Starring Macau’s Jessica Daan as Janet. Gripping cameos by Tanda, Pogi and Kuya playing themselves. A Pingterest.com production. “Swindler’s List,” coming soon to a hearing near you.
Can anyone really be so brain dead? Meet Gigi, a single, successful, high-powered career woman at the top of her game – until she finds out she’s not the only “other woman” of a geriatric senator. There have been 38 others, in 51-50 Studios’ Fifty Shades of Gray Matter, a ditsy, guilty pleasure of a sex-comedy romp involving hanky-panky in high places and also under them. The senator’s brainwashed legal wife blames the women for mindlessly throwing themselves at her hapless husband, who can’t help being so attractive. She also points to Gigi as the real culprit behind the senator’s legal troubles. Seething with vengeance Gigi comes back from exile only to succumb again to mind control by her powerful and charismatic lover. She ends up kinkily teaming up with him and his wife, and the ménage a trois goes down fighting to the bittersweet end.
If you loved “Swindler’s List,” you’ll rave for its sequel, Twelve Years a Slob, when one man’s unswerving dedication to his cause comes at the expense of proper grooming. A sartorially decent legislator, Rep. Toby Tiangco, who is also the secretary general of his party, becomes so slavishly loyal his senior party mates he forgets to comb his hair for more than a decade. Pressing for the immediate release of Janet’s list as well as other lists, Toby hopes to throw a monkey wrench into the wheel of justice. But neglected, his hairdo acquires a life of its own.
More than two decades after the earth-shattering upheaval called People Power, an elite battalion of politicians search for ways to make big bucks and perks in office, in the face of a people fed up with corruption among public officials. Meet The Emoluments Men, a brazen rip-off of George Clooney’s WWII political thriller (“The Monuments Men”) starring Joseph Estrada, his sons, Gloria Arroyo and a cast of 12 senators and 70 congressmen. The acting is so natural. They find the emoluments all right, hiding in plain sight, but only with the help of an evil genius who masterminds the scam of the century. Warning: Graphic details shown of pork being ruthlessly apportioned.
Is there life after career death? See for yourself in Prison Is for Real, the uplifting story of a good-looking senator son of a former president ex-convict, who has a near-career death experience and goes to Heaven, or some place anyway, because it certainly doesn’t look like Heaven. It’s got bars, guards and all, and a mean guy that looks like a warden instead of kindly St. Peter. Also, the people there are careful not to bend over to pick up dropped soap in the showers. Shaken, our handsome senator comes back as if from a bad dream and tells his father, “Yes, Dad, prison is for real, and I may be headed for it!” The young senator starts walking with a cane, just in case he needs to transition to a wheelchair, which will be his preferred mode of transportation to the airport or to court, whichever comes first.
Oddsmakers are betting on the Philippine contenders to torpedo China’s retrospective entries, “Taking Scarborough By Strategy,” “China Deconstructs,” and “Bombard the Headquarters of the Island Hegemonists.”
Not everyone, however, was happy with the Philippines’ entries. Regular Canned Film Festival-goer, Constance Voyer, complained, “Zey ef only ze same subject matter, and ze same acteurs, wiz recurring roles!”
Stung festival organizers pushed back, promptly adding Voyer’s name to Swindler’s List.