WHAT is distinct about Brillante Ma. Mendoza’s sex cinema as in his recent outing, “Palitan,” is its defined and detailed delineation of characters and situations.
These milieus spawn diverse images, conflicts and notions about them discursively hinged on the socio-cultural matrix, say, of Catholicism in the Philippines.
The juxtaposition of two hetero pairs—Jen (Cara Gonzales) and Al (Rash Flores), upcoming bride and groom in a rural town; Maria (Jela Cuenca) and James (Luis Hontiveros) as lovers from the city who come home for the wedding of her friends—crystallizes the impending tension about infidelity and gender bending if not only lesbianism and homoeroticism as the past gay liaison between Jen and Maria is revealed once the former arrives in the idyllic community.
The opening scene alone speaks abundantly of covenant among couples from the ecclesiastical to the civil bonds and preps.
Fortunately, these premises aren’t lost in translation of the palpable scenes from real traditional customs to reel portrayals of these mores like financial contributions from kith and kin, specifically from godmothers and godfathers to the wedding; choices of nuptial reception by the fiancé and fiancée themselves; filial intervention on the purchase of wedding rings; donning of the bridesmaid’s gown before the matrimony that defies common beliefs and superstition that the behavior could ruin the whole occasion etc.
Fanatic to religious norms, Jen’s dad wouldn’t want her to sleep in the same room as her boyfriend although she reasons out they live-in together in the city but the father still prevails she couldn’t do anything.
This is also the parent who was forsaken by his wife—although vaguely elucidated although his daughters talk about the past—which still pains and breeds confusion if not rebellion in Jen and her battered-wife sister, a purveyor in the discussion on the issue of violence against women.
Just a reminder, though. One should suspend disbelief that because the film is titled “Palitan,” a girlfriend or boyfriend swapping occurs anywhere, anytime of the day. No, there is none of this kind on the horizon. There’s no such worn-out and predictable pastiche which makes Mendoza’s creation unusual.
There is only the intimate, covert but freewheeling tryst of the wife-to-be with her childhood and teenage girlfriend not only once nor twice but a few other lovely and passionate moments, particularly during the height of the bridal shower when Jen and Maria hold hands, softly leave their own gig and fill the room with love with only the two of them and the final reckoning of their gaiety before Jen frees herself of her emo and psycho baggage and eventually goes back to the city.
What is novel in Mendoza’s daring acts are the orgy scenes of the private female dancer at the stag party with James, Al and his bosom friend which the husband-to-be later introspectively felt guilty about his partake in the foursome sex play which has a tinge of homoeroticism in the gazes and moves among males.
What is also new is the dreamlike, side-by-side lovemaking of the two pairs in the nude nestled in pristine waterfalls where the two females held hands again and kissed torridly each other to the dagger look of the groom-to-be.
Still, the main knots of contradictions in the practice of the sacrament of marriage are loosened up and the characters are soon liberated.