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Climax |
One cannot simply praise a film for delving into a significant theme, albeit failing to ferret its truth out. One has to probe the mode of production of sexuality not only textually but also in terms of a particular political economy that regulates certain ideals. The exploitation of Anna Marie Gutierrez and Barbara Benitez as bold stars who has to be led to the rough of the genre and industrial perversities to lap up the staple fodder of obscenity, undermines the message of the film about the accountability of sexuality as an experience that refuses and wounds humanity, at the same time that it also unleashes possibilities. All this comes down to the film's moral world of Emma and Lolita's milieu which to a crucial extent exoticizes our country, not really as a pristine and idyllic essence but as a libidinal clearing of uninhibited sexuality. While we do not see the corruption affecting the rural locus, this mode of exotification nevertheless peddles and rapes both the territory of the probinsiya as a setting for sex and concomitantly the women portraying Emma and Lolita, who bare their bodies gratuitously just to make a point that purports to fight for their skin. If there is something pornographic here it is that. It is not so much the overdrawn sex scenes or the unnecessary closing of the film. It is the legerdemain that maligns the potential of the film as discourse on sexuality.
Directed By: Anthony Taylor
Screenplay: F.C. Gargantilla
Cinematographer: Gener Buenaseda
Musical Director: Boy Alcaide
Film Editor: Ernesto Jacinto
Production Designer: Edel Templonuevo
Produced By: Victory Films, Inc.
Release Date: July 18, 1985