The Flipcritic

When I went to visit my fiancée at Glorietta a week ago, she told me that there was a mob of men on the second floor area waiting for the Viva Hot Babes to arrive and climb the escalator. We both met at the ground floor and watched as these howling horny males ogled and hollered at every attractive woman who went up the elevator, even before their sex idols arrived. If you can relate to these men, then this movie is for you.

FIRST TIME is the kind of film that deserves no kind words and no marks of approval. It inspires a sadness derived not from its characters, but of the use of its craft. At its very core is a pungent sense of filth and despicability and its only success is its effort to prostitute the talents of its director as well as the bodies of its starlets. Just when you think it cannot offend enough, it will go lower and lower and lower. How our industry can allow this smut to be peddled publicly makes me ashamed to be Filipino.

I wonder what director Lyle Sacris was thinking when making this film. If he is a father, would he allow his wife or his daughter to participate in such perverse characterizations if they were willing to? Would you let your partner do it? Your mother? Your girlfriend? I do not say this to anger Mr. Sacris or his family and friends, but to make a point. What good is a love scene in a movie if it serves no purpose for its story? I am no prude, but it’s crystal clear that every sex scene in this film serves only one purpose—to get you off. The last time I looked, that meant pornography.

Women are not just sexual objects (heck, at some point, we all are). They are the matriarchs of our families, our sensitive friends, our mothers, our daughters, our sisters, our wives, as well as our lovers. This film doesn’t even portray its women as such, but as whores living on the borders of pubescent fantasy. They never have problems and never question the dubiously dangerous situations they get themselves in. They get drunk, fantasize loudly, swear heavily, masturbate outrageously and ogle intensely. They don’t mind getting groped, taking pictures of male genitalia, making public spectacles, or dressing like sex maniacs. These aren’t women. These are men!

Which brings me to my next point. Whoever designed these characters for whatever purpose they intend to meet have no idea what women want, or what they value from their relationships with men. I’m sure women love sex just as much as men do, but I know they’re a lot more tactful and mature in dealing with their satisfaction. The film’s creative influences must hate and fear women, since they are humiliated and demeaned beyond the normal range of human reason here.

The film comprises three stories of young ladies who have lost their virginity. The first involves Dianne (Jen Rosendahl), a college student forever frustrated with her tame (but alarmingly organized) boyfriend, and willing to go through every single act of foreplay with any good-looking man (or woman). She wants to lose her virginity to a high-school jock because she believes basketball players are ‘taller.’ She and her close friends live in an alarmingly vulnerable female dorm (where boyfriends can walk in and out with little scrutiny apparently) and dress like high-class hookers at parties.

Now you try making sense of that. I can’t.

The second episode focuses on Cris (Gwen Garci), a clueless half-witted bombshell who works for a local documentary channel, hoping to film an artist she idolizes. The artist, played thanklessly by Joel Torre, is so maddeningly pretentious and perverse, that it is hard to believe that Cris would sacrifice her time and dignity (in ways even a circus freak would call weird) to film him. And yet she does, despite his pathetic rationalizations on art and eroticism.

The third installment focuses on Jane (Myles Her­nandez), a sex-starved coffee shop employee who can’t wait to hump the handsome cell phone-wielding yuppie frequenting their establishment. Her best friend is even hornier than she is and agrees to fornicate with their co-worker, a janitor, who just happens to be an uncircumcized peeping tom with hopes of doing it with Jane.

Each one of these stories is an obvious setup for the payoff, which is to see each girl having sex. They’re hornier than Stifler of AMERICAN PIE, but never as endearing. Not one of them values the experience of making love for the first time, with someone whose company they can genuinely treasure this memorable event with. Did it ever occur to them that they could get pregnant? Are they afraid of contracting a disease? Do they value safe sex? Their parents are conveniently absent along with their common sense and intelligence.

To make matters worse, the direction is just as incoherent as the film’s believability. There are many times when the film seems to be edited by a fourth grade student. Yet there are moments when Mr. Sacris displays his creative flair. He mimics Stanley Kubrick’s use of definitive score (evident in the second episode). Sporadically he captures color very well, displaying a rich texture in some shots, (such as one of a Buddhist altar). He uses a 90-degree tilted shot passing underneath library tables achieving a somewhat elegant effect. Of course, all of these are just diversions before we get to body parts all adolescents want to see, so what good are his exercises? His table shots eventually lead to a spread-eagled Garci, who of course doesn’t notice that the entire male population of the library is staring into her barely-covered womanhood (Not that she doesn’t seem to mind). It doesn’t help that none of these Viva Hot Babes can act.

I can only wonder why many Filipinos have such a retarded fascination of virginity and the loss of such. Everyone at some point in his or her lives must want to experience sex for the first time. But why does it have to be viewed with such juvenile immaturity? Couldn’t these filmmakers have made a straight-forward story of a young man and a young woman, both nervous but willing to commit themselves to an experience they will both look back on for the rest of their lives? No Filipino seems to be willing to deal with sex and sexuality seriously (or even half-seriously). In the end, these Viva Hot Babes, with their foul mouths and low self-esteem, portray women with the minds of teenage boys. If that doesn’t insult our female community, nothing ever will.

There used to be a time where the term ‘Filipina beauty’ connoted a pure dignity. But the Filipino Film industry marred that connotation when it sold its soul for the sake of making a buck. So now we are left with our little children dancing to Sex Bomb girl songs, and our young women hoping to be the next big-time starlet to go ‘bold’. FIRST TIME is a culmination of this dark achievement. And there is no sign that it will be the last. Here’s to the whoring of the Filipina.

Posted by FLIPCRITIC at September 26, 2003 12:22 PM