Synopsis
When an alien comes back to take him, a mouthless young man's life twists and turns as his memories untangle.
When an alien comes back to take him, a mouthless young man's life twists and turns as his memories untangle.
더 미씽, 身體拼圖
I feel like I've used the word 'miracle' a lot when describing Carl Papa's films. I use it a lot in the context of Filipino cinema anyway, where resources for filmmakers are scarce, and it sometimes feels like movies are good in spite of everything. But Papa, who insists on making animated films on shoestring budgets provided by festival grants, has consistently made films that just make me feel like something otherworldly must have happened.
This time, he had a team of ninety animators, and it still feels magical. What struck me was how expressive the faces remained, even as features got taken away. And this is a film where it really matters, where we have to be convinced of…
you know what’s scarier than ghosts? memories. the painful ones. a never-ending narrative forever carved in your mind. it morphs. it follows. haunting. traumatizing. alien-shapeshifting. until we distance ourselves now that it’s become more and more foreign to understand; but we try to make sense of it, at least in ways we know how.
Iti Mapukpukaw weaves courageous vignettes of reclaiming your own voice and the struggles we encounter in between. that sometimes, all we just need is someone who patiently understands our worldview, someone who’s willing to lend their shoulders—albeit in that small, cozy space under our bed.
*happy halloween! 🎃
**cinema 76 with gennie
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
tangina ng lahat ng mga alien.
wow this movie was so nuanced, sensitive and gentle in telling a very important story. it felt like a companion for people who are trying to regain what was taken away from them. so powerful & meaningful. i hope the voices of all those who were silenced will be heard again. such a beautiful film.
I'll get right into it. And I'm sorry, I know this is an unpopular opinion but it needs to be said:
This was such harmful messaging. It was resilience porn for a delicate subject matter that, in reality, would take a lot of time and effort — read: no magical cure! no instant happy ending! — for someone to even begin to heal from.
My reception of this might be different (better) had there been more focus on the healing process. Like if our protagonist came back to reality sooner rather than sticking with the fantasy for most of the film and, in turn, making a spectacle of the trauma.
There needed to be a balance between the escapist fantasies…
I must ashamedly confess that as a selection committee member, I pushed against giving Iti Mapukpukaw the grant. My reasons being
1. It felt too much like Mysterious Skin
2. I didn’t think Carl Papa would pull an animated film off in less than two years
Happy to admit I was wrong on both accounts. Unlike Mysterious Skin, Iti is quiet and sensitive, relying on the strength of only three earnest characters to take you through harrowing trauma. It also uses animation to an impressive degree, symbolizing incompleteness with the checkered photoshop layer and using the surreal quality of the medium to prevent you from questioning Eric’s reality.
It’s great and touching and expertly crafted. And Dolly, as always, is THE BEST.
Warning: Spoiler(s) ahead!
Fugues and psychogenic blackouts suddenly appear like blanks in the life of our protagonist, following the death of someone who's been crucial to a life-changing point in his childhood. All it took was a quick visit to his uncle's before the floodgates that have helped contain the spaceships and alien invasions flung wide open and the next few episodes of his adult life turned into a cloze test whereof we also become forced companions to his exploits in recapturing the missing pieces of his old self and facing the monster he's finally ready to take down this time around.
P.S.
The 4/5 rating will best be explained by the review I wrote on G. Araki's 'Mysterious Skin' which can be accessed here .
Wow, a film about arrested development due to sexual trauma, involving imagined aliens. What a mysterious concept.
Positives first: Cool marriage of rotoscoping and traditional animation, sure. The multiple switches in animation styles as plot device were inspired. There's a tender love story in here as well.
Now to my lukewarm take... At best, portraying sexual trauma as some mythic monster that we have to keep at arm's length all our lives until the it reaches critical mass and we finally decide to kill it by *checks notes* acknowledging it, so only then we can start the healing process, is woefully tired. Come oooon. At worst, it's regressive, anti-corrective, and only further enforces culture of silence. It's easier said than…
tangina, ang bigat.
when eric said the final line, i just broke down. sobrang galing to make a film about sexual abuse in sci-fi like wow, grabe, and yes, u can only make this film in animation bc anlawak ng pwede mong gawin with the film / story.
nakutuban ko na sya when eric’s angkel asked / talked about yung sa tuli,, putangina lang. and throughout the film, my mind was just thinking na omygod yung alien is a metaphor for eric’s angkel and his past experiences !!! and kaya wala syang mouth at unti-unting nawawala ang mata, tainga, kamay, at private part ay dahil isa syang victim. eric was silenced, his abuser made him look at and hear his…