Whammy Alcazaren | Bold Eagle / 2022

no one there

by Douglas Messerli

 

Whammy Alcazaren (screenwriter and director) Bold Eagle / 2022 [16 minutes]

 

Bold (who uses the internet name luckymaybe1923) is highly depressed, trapped in his own apartment, fearing or disinterested in going out or answering the continued knocks and cries at the door. Instead, he dreams of Hawaii, where he imagines he might be happy, and spends his days in his Navotas City apartment crammed with family memories, posters of all kinds, stamp albums, and an ever-patient cat, while spending his time mostly while on hallucinogenic drugs and seeking love from strange men on the internet as they masturbate and fuck their way to “happiness.”

   At moments, Bold Eagle is truly beautiful and imaginative—although its tripped-out images are somewhat predictable and I could certainly do without the smiley emblems and the pussy heads—and filled with pornographic sexual acts of all sorts, on film and in photographs.       

     Yet this is also one of the most depressing films I have ever seen, with, it appears, no way out for Bold who can only vary his world by dressing up in different costumes and playing out the behavior of various animals and other figures. He cannot find his way back, evidently into life, and despite all the cheer-up songs sung in English by Hawaiian choir boys, he still finds it difficult to get out of bed or even rise from his usual position on the floor.

     He wishes he were the cat. According to the Internet, he seems to have won a free trip to Hawaii. Perhaps he should answer the knocks at the door, the calls for him to come out. But Bold, is not an Eagle and cannot leave his protective nest.

     This Philippines short movie by Whammy Alcazaren is definitely not for everyone.

 

Los Angeles, August 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2024).