The Asia Triennial Manchester 11 began last night with a screening of Brillante Mendoza's Lola (2009). While the audience and the festival curator Andy Willis were quick to praise the performances of the two leads, Anita Linda and Rustica Carpio, during the post-screening Q&A with Mendoza, what immediately captivated me were the forces of nature, particularly the pummeling wind and rain, that were captured in the film. Following two grandmothers who are linked by a crime involving their grandsons, the film portrays the loss and the economic hardship on both sides, keeping close to the characters for much of the film, with a handheld shooting style: one of the grandsons has been murdered and so a funeral must be arranged; the other is arrested for the crime and so legal costs must be raised and eventually the offer of a settlement between families. The difficulties faced by each grandmother's family drives their actions and attempts at bargaining, fundraising; the determination and energy of the two protagonists is inexhaustible. Shown within a context of widespread poverty and financial pressure (the game show on TV watched by one of the characters is called 'Credit or Debit') the choice to shoot in the midst of driving winds and torrential downpours gives the sense of people being battered in every respect, a physical manifestation of the economic odds stacked against them. Mendoza also conveys the power of these natural forces through the sound recording; the rushing noise of the weather, its volume, was striking.With moments that are heartrending and moments that are humorous - I am thinking foremost of the scene in which the grandmother of the deceased glimpses her grandson's body lying on a table and the hilarious photo booth hiccup - Mendoza skilfully weaves emotional punctuation, comedic lightness (a pallbearer falling into the water) and clearly has his dramatic arc mapped onto a seemingly unadorned, documentarist double portrait of hard times in Manila. It was also heartening to be sat in a fairly well attended screening on an uncharacteristically warm Saturday night in early October. With few opportunities to see independent films by directors from the Philippines and my own attempt to get the works of Khavn de la Cruz shown at the upcoming Frequency festival in Lincoln being unsuccessful - I relished the occasion as an introduction to Mendoza's filmmaking.
