Filipino Cinema

Used to be you could grab six dvds with the title of Sex In Philippine Cinema, 1 through 6, but good luck with that now.  Amazon has only one of them available, from a third-party seller with a price that is laughably high.  Even I don't want to see nekkid Philippine actresses that much. I am particularly resistant to pay more than $1 for another in the series because #1 is a bitter, awful, horrible disappointment.

Fact 1: I think Filipino actresses are sublime, some of the most physically attractive women in the world.  This disc has more than a dozen of them in scenes from a similar number of movies and so I started this project with energy and enthusiasm.

Fact 2: Pick any cinematic tactic you can think of to take a beautiful unclothed woman and hide what the good lord gave her and that is what you will find in this one disc of some 100 minutes.

 

• Scenes so dark they could grow mushrooms?  Check, check and check again, in scene after scene.
• Scenes shot with the camera so close to the action it would take scientific instruments to measure the distance?  Uh huh.  After a while I began to feel claustrophobic.
• The camera hovering on anything but the good parts or focused on a guy's face as his infinitely more interesting bed partner is doing all the work?  I am sad to say, yes indeed.
• Things in the way, betwixt camera and actress, so that what you can see is reflected in a mirror, or hidden behind a curtain, or shot between exposed plumbing (unusually common, that one)?  Oh hell yes.

I was thinking perhaps the problem was endemic to the Philippines, that as a Catholic nation its actresses refused to do anything particularly overt while out of clothes, but that is not true.  Three examples:

1. Maureen Larrazabal is demurely naked in three scenes on the DVD

Maureen Larrazabal in Ekis (1999)



Maureen Larrazabal in Unfaithful Wife 2 (1999)



Maureen Larrazabal in Sugo Ng Tondo (2000)

 ... but in Blood Surf she is exposed in the bright sunshine;

2. You would conclude the bounteous Joyce Jimenez spends all her time in dark places

Joyce Jimenez in Warat (1999)



Joyce Jimenez in Scorpio Nights 2 (1999)



Joyce Jimenez in Balahibong Pusa (2001) (English translation: Furry Pussies)



until you see the movie, Body Parts;

3. And the wonderful Aya Medel reveals much more in a few seconds of Troublesome Night 4

than she did in several minutes of Squala.

The only fair conclusion is that he who assembled these clips deliberately chose ones that give the viewer only a frame here and a frame there of good parts. This is especially frustrating the the case of Joyce Jimenez in Warat, because the still below indicates that he could have made much better choices.