tomorrow may be different
by Douglas Messerli
Crisaldo Pablo (writer and director) Bilog (Circles)
/ 2005
The poster for Filipino director Crisaldo
Pablo’s 2005 film Bilog (Circles) looks as if it was one of the
counterfeit porno films that the hero of the work, Cris (Archie de Calma) daily
sells—along with candies, perfumes, fruit, beaded necklaces, and even crude
drawings of wedding dresses, in fact almost anything anyone visiting the vast
Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City of Metropolitan Manila might desire,
including desire itself.
Yet, Pablo’s film is so much complex and dramatically significant than
all of these simple flaws that one also wonders why this film has not become a
kind of underground cult favorite. In Chris’ world, fruit sellers,
business-men-and-women, prostitutes (both male and female), along with just
plain naïfs having just arrive in the Philippine capitol come together in the
park’s deep shadows.
Chris is not just a simple con-man carrying
his large canvas bag of tricks, but is determined to help particularly last
group of individuals find housing, love, and acceptance in a world where such
tangibles and intangibles are nearly impossible to find. For a small percent on
a loan, he’s ready to personally take on one of the earliest country boys whom
he rubs against, the beautiful Deo (Keno Alejandro), who has followed a smart
and savvy female social activist to the city, personally escorting him to a
kind of flea-bag dormitory, where men live three to a room, sharing bathing
kits (which consist of little but a pan and soap), and even bed-space.
Yet, Chris has knowingly bedded this new straight boy with two gay men,
in particular the serious-minded Rod (Rudolph Segundo), negotiating a smaller
rent for Beo with the hope, it appears, that he may one day have sex with him.
Yes, Chris is gay, but unlike the handsome young men with whom he surrounds
himself he will never be able to fulfill his desires. As Pablo’s closing theme
song puts it (with lyrics by Pablo and music by Ato del Rosario): “I’ve gotten
used to failed relations.” For all of Chris’ seeming cynicism, however, the
same song ends “Tomorrow may be different.”
Throughout the film we see Chris interacting with dozens of individuals,
often taking advantage of them or simply accepting their dismissals of his
peddling services; yet he knows a broken heart or, just as importantly, one
soon to be broken when he sees it, and is often willing to zip up his bag of
tricks and work, often without a fee, to help fan the flames of desire.
One such figure whom he takes under his wing, is Rod, who has put his
own life—and his gay sexual urges—on hold while he works as an office boy for a
company head who later, as has a recent government communique, openly remarks
that fags are a true danger to the society. He works in a world from which he
has locked himself away, rejecting the temptations, every desire and sex, and
even a simple beloved mango for breakfast, so that he can save up enough money
to send it back home to help out his ailing brother (who eventually dies of
stomach cancer) and his other brothers, mother, and father, none of whom, he
suggests, seem to be able to care for themselves.
Chris argues that he should at least release his forbidden desires once
in a while, if not daily. Rod eventually does release his pent-up sexuality
when Deo—finally discovering that the girl of his dreams is disinterested in
any relationship between the two of them—seeks consolation in him, the two of
them, after Chris clears the room of the other boarder and any want-to-be
voyeurs, enjoying intense sex.
When Deo himself becomes a kind of intern-activist, the story focuses on
others of Chris’ “friends” and “enemies,” the latter of whom keep him out of
the house they own and away from visiting other clients. The “friends” seem
increasingly to made up of male prostitutes who find clients in the park or,
when it closes at midnight, on the street.
One of the most handsome of them is Paolo (Rezíven Bulado), who has
apparently contracted AIDS, and who a couple of times Chris saves from jumping
from freeways and other dangerous spots. Paolo, however, eventually enters the
park late at night, strips off his clothes, and from the top of one of the park
buildings, jumps to his death.
At other times, the entire community, fruit sellers and gay boys
equally, are accosted by police raids, one of which leaves one of the seller’s
young daughters almost dead when, left alone after the police have arrested her
mother, she wanders out into traffic. She is saved by a local doctor.
Yet good things also begin to happen. A doctor who daily comes to the
park on her lunchbreak, reencounters her former lover, who has every day since
she has rejected him returned to the same spot with the belief that eventually
she will return; their love is reignited.
Two warring mango sellers, forced to rush away from yet another police
raid, help each other, one knowing of a place where they might temporarily hide
with their wares. Simply out of appreciation for the help of the other, the
least comely of the two women unexpectedly kisses the other seller, who admits
that she rather liked the kiss, hinting that these to former enemies may become
lesbian lovers.
Deo again runs across the joyless Rod, and tells him of his love for
him, and his desire to again have sex.
Even Chris is “saved,” as a wedding dress obviously meant for one of his
would-be customers, which has floated out of the jeepney in which he is being
held captive, is spotted by some of his customers and protégés who quickly
catch up with the jeepney and demand that the doors be opened, allowing for his
escape.
Pablo’s film, filled as it is by lost souls, also reveals that just the
smallest bit of love and dreaming for them changes everything. For as poor and
desperate as most of these individuals are, they truly believe, as they circle
round one another, “tomorrow may be different.”
Los Angeles, June 27, 2020
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June
2020).
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