Petersen Vargas | How to Die Young in Manila / 2020

dead boys

by Douglas Messerli

 

Petersen Vargas, Jade Castro, and Kaj Palanca (screenplay), Petersen Vargas (director) How to Die Young in Manila / 2020 [12 minutes]

 

This short work by Philippines director Petersen Vargas might almost be described as a parable. It was apparently made as a pitch teaser to his full-length feature, Some Nights I Feel Like Walking, which will premiere 2024.   

    If How to Die Young in Manila is any evidence of his talent, the new feature film should be a remarkable hit. A young teenage boy (Elijah Canlas), lying to his parents about sleeping overnight at a friend’s house, has arranged a gay meet-up with a stranger, who we see him talking to on his cellphone in a taxi in the first scene of the film. The other boy (Kokoy de Santos) apologizes for having worn a black T-shirt, presumably since it will be harder to identify him.

     Having evidently reached the designated destination, the boy looks out his window to observe just such a figure and leaves the taxi. Suddenly the boy in black, who appears to look at Elijah’s character (the characters are given no names) in a knowing way rounds up his group of friends, who we soon discover our gay street hustlers, and pushes them off ahead of himself.

     Elijah follows, leading him into a men’s room where the young teenage hustlers (Miguel Almendras, Shu Calleja, and Kych Minemoto) are irritated that their “leader” has chosen to this moment to enter a stall. They want to get on their way, evidently all having “customers” lined up for the night. When they notice the intruder, they look at Elijah menacingly, he ducking into another stall, and calling his “date.”

      The boys leave, Kokoy soon coming out of the stall to follow his friends. Elijah now has no choice but to continue follow the group.

    In the first alley they enter, he already notices that one of their number has been killed, now sprawled out naked in the alley, while the others stop for cigarettes and momentary conversations before moving on, seemingly not even aware of the body.

     While Elijah, puzzled, now takes out a cigarette, one of the hustlers, performed by Almendras, wonders why he’s following him, suggesting that perhaps he wants an “appointment,” but Kokoy suddenly appears again, demanding he join them, saving the young boy from Miguel’s aggressive behavior.

     They continue on their way, but upon a stairway, Elijah again discovers one of them laying on the steps, his body covered in blood. He looks at the corpse in horror, but still moves on since the others have again continued without even noticing.

      He follows them under a bridge to a river bank where he now notices Miguel’s body.

      The film switches to a subway passage where he finally catches up to Kokoy, as he stands beside him, the boy in the black shirt finally asking “Do we know each other?” Finally, it’s clear, Elijah imagines that this is some kind of code, answering vaguely that he thinks they do, a bit relieved to have finally caught up with his cute boy who was to have sex with. But he recognizes in Kokoy’s face that the look has altered from curiosity to confusion and doubt, realizing that this is not at all the boy with whom he’s made an appointment. Walking down the passage way he observes another good-looking boy (perhaps also played by Kokoy De Santos) dressed in a black T-shirt, and realizes that he is the one he has been looking for all night. 

     As Elijah begins to move forward to the new boy, he turns back to see the other hustler now in his undershorts shot through by two arrows, obviously cupid’s arrows, not the ubiquitous murderer of the other young men. He communicates via cellphone with the other Kokoy who moves, smilingly toward him as Elijah moves in his direction for the film’s white-out.

      To many this work might seem like an absurdist drama, except for those who read the constant news reports of then Philippines President Rodrigo Duerte who personally (he admitted himself to killing at least 3 boys) and through his vigilante groups killed hundreds of young boys each month who they described as drug addicts. The boys killed also included homeless children and others who without full evidence were described as drug addicts, obviously including many young gay men, particularly street hustlers not so fully protected by the very active Philippines LGBTQ community and governmental laws.  

     Indeed, the director himself described the murders to be so prevalent that after a while people began not even to notice the bodies piling up each morning on the Manila streets. As the on-line BLThai reporter observes, in an interview with Sine Liwanag,

 

“Vargas said that the movie is ‘about a boy who happens to chase his desire despite what’s happening to that other side of life in Manila that he might not be aware of and is suddenly becoming aware of.’ Basically, Vargas wanted to show a glimpse of queer people and their strange encounters that happen behind a city that has its own but also a violent story. And here comes the “not aware and suddenly becoming aware” part. Vargas said that he tried to build a vision of Manila where dead bodies accumulated, yet life goes on. It’s a portrayal of the fact that people, particularly the middle class who are often unaffected by the then Duterte administration’s “war on drugs,” seemed to have a “visceral reaction” to the sight of death but could do nothing, and so they simply carry on with their lives. These people knew about the death of victims as young as teenagers, but that’s pretty much about it — they just knew it.”

   

      Petersen presents us with an unbelievably terrifying world that just happened to be true, but which even those suffering the horrors attempted to ignore in their search of survival and love.

 

Los Angeles, November 29, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2023).