CHERIE GIL gives a very daring performance as a lesbian director in “Kaputol”, written by Ricky Lee, produced by Alfred Vargas and directed by Macarthur Alejandre who based in a short film he made years ago. Her lover is Angel Aquino as Maebelle and they are seen engaging in a torrid bed scene.
This is Cherie’s second daring film we saw this year as we’ve just her doing a nude scene in the Cinema One entry, “Tia Madre”. Alfred Vargas himself has two graphic love scenes with two different women (Adienne Vergara and Elora Espano.)
“Kaputol” (the English title they gave it is “Fragments”) actually has two stories as it is a movie within a movie. Both Cherie and Alfred play two different roles. Cherie is Kiki and Rina, while Alfred is Robert and Caloy.
It starts in 1974, the height of martial law, with Caloy, a scavenger who walks with a limp, seeing again his sister, Rina, a rebel-activist who is wanted by the law, in the small shanty where he lives.
You know it’s a movie within a movie because you can hear the voice of Cherie Gil giving instructions as the director. Later, she and Alfred will fight over what kind of ending they will give to their movie.
We then see her as Kiki watching the rushes of the movie with Robert, who also wrote the script which has yet to have an edning. Kiki is separated from her American husband who got custody of their two children and she agonizes over this, specially when she learns later that her husband took their kids to the States without seeing her at all.
Robert, in turn, has his own cross to carry. His son, Conrad (Ronwaldo Martin), is also an activist who has gone to the mountains to work against the government and is abducted by soldiers. Robert now tries his best to locate the whereabouts of his missing son.
The movie is big on social relevance, tackling very serious issues like repression, torture, corruption in the government, sona, extra judicial killing or tokhang, the exploitation of indigenous tribes, desaparicidos, and even manages to attack film critics with a producer who says he has lost interest in making movies because of bad reviews.
Cherie as Kiki says she lost custody of her children because she neglected them while she’s busy confronting a film critic who wrote negative reviews of her movies.
Both Cherie and Alfred deliver first rate performances. And we want to thank Alfred for bankrolling this kind of film that is clearly not made for the masa audience but for art film connoisseurs. It’s clearly intended more for international film festivals to be noticed by foreign audiences. Well, whatever, we hope they will eventually find the moviegoers that they deserve.
