film, eyeballs, brain

The very title of Veronica Velasco’s comedy, Last Supper No. 3, promises seriality and repetition, and absolutely delivers. Winner of the Best Picture award at the recent 2009 Cinemalaya festival, Last Supper No. 3 is an intelligent little satire about the Philippine justice system and the legal travails of one Wilson Nañawa, a production designer for television commercials.

It revolves around the disappearance of something one can find in just about every Catholic Filipino home: an image of Da Vinci’s Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples, which in this film is being “auditioned” for a corned beef commercial. Nañawa is an assistant production designer, and needs to dress up the dining room’s interior.

But “Last Supper No. 3” — a faded reddish tapestry that didn’t pass muster simply because it just wasn’t as big as the one chosen for the ad – gets lost in the filming shuffle, and Nañawa can’t remember where it went, perhaps an unwitting victim of the corned beef. (The ad’s slogan is something like “Makakalimot ka sa sarap” (“So good you’ll forget everything”), and which shows a family at a dinner table, momentarily struck by amnesia after spoonfuls of the gorgeously-filmed corned beef, presumably spritzed with fixatives.)

Sensing an opportunity to make some money – or perhaps, just perhaps, acting to assuage a truly aggrieved self – Gareth Pugeda, the owner of Last Supper No. 3, refuses the 3,000 pesos that Nañawa offers in replacement, and demands 25,000 pesos instead. Things escalate, slapstick blows are exchanged, the case is accidentally fast-tracked, and Nañawa and his assistant suddenly find themselves in the middle of a bureaucratic nightmare. Like the toothpaste Nañawa squeezes repeatedly onto a toothbrush for a commercial he’s filming, things are never exactly right: hearings are postponed, one of the parties is unaccountably absent, jeepneys are hard to find in the middle of nowhere.

What’s exactly right, though, is Last Supper No. 3‘s casting. Joey Paras is excellent as the film’s protagonist; it’s hard to believe his only other screen credits (on IMDB, at least) are of sound technician in the late ‘80s. (A more extensive Google search reveals a far more extensive career in theater, with Tanghalang Pilipino, which explains his acting; he’s a natural.) Jojit Lorenzo, as Pugeda, is very good as well (as is his mother, played by Beverly Salviejo); it’s great to see such outright deception played so self-righteously on screen. (Nañawa performs some knee-slappingly funny deception himself, when he pretends to be a friend inquiring about whether there’s a warrant of arrest issued for him.)

Last Supper No. 3 is conceived as a broad farce, with a musical soundtrack by Dan Gil meant to underline Wilson’s every mincing step. All right, I exaggerate, but as Jovy Zarate, who took me to the screening, said, the film is somewhat “dependent on gay antics”. Which is quite true: watching Nañawa run and, I hate to say it, sashay, after public transport is low humor, but the film really derives its laughs from his helplessness. If Last Supper No. 3 starts lagging in the middle third, it’s because it wears the viewer down with repetition, and I can imagine this is deliberate on Velasco’s part. We’re trapped along with Wilson and his misfortunes, and we’re equally helpless as well. We can only laugh.

The film is a textbook example of the observance of a major rule of comedy: just about everyone else, except our poor protagonist, seems to think everything happening around them is actually normal. The film is populated with a series of increasingly larger-than-life characters whom Nañawa meets on his journey, like Stations of the Cross: an insufferable defense lawyer, an overly dramatic court interpreter, and an assortment of legal functionaries whose sole role seems to be that of steering hapless souls to further perdition. (Ricky Davao, Debraliz, and Liza Lorena make deadpan comic cameos, and watch for Maricel Soriano in a particularly hilarious bit as a clerk – she looks like she hasn’t aged a day.)

Since it is, after all, a film that features a production designer, attention to detail in the sets is very much in evidence, with a clear division between the pristine, mod studios and the fluorescent-lit, drab interiors of the courtrooms and barangay tanod offices. Much comic mileage is derived from a hideous Cory-yellow architectural monstrosity of a city hall, exemplifying a labyrinthine bureaucracy — offices interchangeable from one another, manila folders piled precariously on shelves, and a grand staircase that marks a paradoxical ascension to at least a couple of Circles of Hell.

On the whole, Last Supper No. 3 isn’t exactly a comic masterpiece, but it’s way smarter than the Filipino comedies I saw in my youth, and it’s certainly more than just a diverting trifle. There are surprising little glints of unexpected wisdom, like the moment when Pugeda, calmly sucking on a beer in front of his house one evening, tells a pleading Nañawa, now at the end of his tether, why he’s still pursuing the case.

It’s a particularly interesting moment, because it leads one to ponder about whom the courts truly are for. Considering the travesty that is the Philippine justice system, which has always favored the wealthy and powerful, it may, in the odd case of Last Supper No. 3, actually be working for one of the powerless. Or something like that. Either way, Nañawa hears his answer, walks off in a huff, and then… promptly steps in a pile of dog shit.

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[NOTE: I saw the screening at the UP Film Center one torrential Tuesday night, and the place was packed with excited moviegoers. It really was a thrill to be there, and if I lived anywhere closer, I’d have watched every single Cinemalaya entry. One of the things about Filipino movie distribution is that films barely make it to DVD in the first place; try finding, even in Manila, any of the more recent critically-acclaimed Filipino films (particularly the independent ones) which actually made it onto DVD, and you’ll understand my hunger for this stuff.]

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