viewed irl w/ apparently the only english-subtitled 35mm reel the organizers could find (the film was initially shot in 16mm), which resulted in the juciest, most sizzling b&w film grains i've ever seen...very fitting for a gothic romance with psychological undertones. that affect is unreplicated from the online copies of the film imo.
in the q&a afterwards, ishii said that he was glad that there was a sizeable audience for the film, as this was one of the few non-documentary…
agüero films his garden and cats with the same reverence as he filmed the school and its students in one hundred children waiting for a train. this one is a grower...if lily chou-chou works best for adolescence, then letters to my dead parents would be best marinated upon those in their mid-40s and older. a family scrapbook teeming with ruminations, left histories, and the banality of repeating the same household chores you performed as a child but now in your father's shoes.
Third World Romance beams warmth onto its proletariat lovebirds through verbal affirmations of their accumulated injustices while glossing over the toil entrenched in everyday labor. I doubt that Black Sheep or Baltazar wanted to indulge in Wang Bing long authenticities nor recreate poverty porn. That’s far from what Manileño blue-collar workers desire. The filmmakers are more interested in creating simple havens grounded in its settings and scales of conflict.
The couple breathes through familiar environments: side streets, EDSA, supermarkets, thin…
@pinoy ixfps and/or those that love them: give this film two more years to get on streaming services. when that qt on bumble discloses their rising sign and favorite ghibli film, you set this up in the queue for thursday's netflix and chill. 2nd date onwards for maximum potency. you'll end up actually watching gitling together. you joke about what the subtitles and the framing of your middle class mise-en-scène would be if god were filming the two of you…
