Biyaheng Lupa is a long and tragic journey

Whether traveling outside or within the city, bus rides in the Philippines are often long, painful ordeals marked by frequent stopovers and the horrifying prospect of being seated next to a complete psycho.

In Bing Lao’s “Biyaheng Lupa" (which loosely translates to “Journey by Land" but instead goes by the international release title, “Soliloquy"), that same excruciating bus ride is captured in 90 minutes of film. Lao took his screenplay for “Biyahe" to a director friend three years ago. But when things didn’t take off, he decided to make the film his directorial debut. And there lies the pothole. As a screenplay, “Biyahe" holds much promise, with a motley cast of Philippine indie film favorites like Shamaine Buencamino, Jacklyn Jose, Coco Martin, Eugene Domingo, Angel Aquino, Mercedes Cabral and Andoy Ranay breathing life into the characters. But their acting chops were disrupted by confused editing and a disappointing conclusion. The film starts with an assortment of passengers on board a bus bound for Bicol. As it leaves Manila, Micky (Carlo Guevarra), a handsome deaf-mute on his way to visit his biological mother, boards the bus and captures the interest of several passengers, notably the flamboyant gay Jinky (Ranay) and the unemployed Obet (Martin). Instead of listening to the characters’ dialogues, the audience hears what is inside the passengers’ heads, a masterful stroke from Lao. This proves to be a challenge to the actors, who are reduced to facial expressions in making their characters believable. Nevertheless, the actors delivered well on Lao’s task and managed to keep the story interesting, at least before the story ended abruptly. The first half of the film focuses on Cora (Susan Africa), a mother mourning the death of her father; Fina (Buencamino), a game show contestant who regrets getting married to a lowly government employee; Anabel (Cabral), a pregnant girl who fears giving birth to a squid; and Irene (Domingo), who is about to leave her son to work as a lady driver in Qatar. The next half of the film delves into the musings of Helen (Jose), a married woman having an affair with a younger man in Bicol; Alex (Julio Diaz), a down-and-out former office employee who is trying his luck in multilevel marketing; and Lilian (Aquino), the town gossip who is patiently searching for true love. Lao knows how to tell a story through his characters’ biting and masterful dialogues – or in this case, unspoken reflections – but the editing and shots were unimaginative. In one scene, the passengers mysteriously switched seats. There were also some characters that popped out of nowhere, without showing how they boarded the bus. There was also an awkward singing scene near the end of the film – which somehow transcended that heart-wrenching scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia" - where the passengers erupted to the chorus of “Kahit Isang Saglit," heard of course from their minds. The power ballad is beautiful but doesn’t say much to propel the story of the bus riders. Unlike in Magnolia, where Amy Mann’s song ‘Wise Up’ spoke about the characters’ feelings, “Kahit ‘Sang Saglit" brimmed of karaoke singing cheesiness reserved for the nearest stopover at some out-of-the-way restaurant. Still, all this is forgiven with the master class acting of Lao’s cast who pushed the film’s interest meter forward. Lao made his characters so despicable, pathetic, lovable and endearing that one can’t help but root for them nevertheless. Major spoiler alert! That’s why it’s puzzling why Lao had to kill off some of the characters when the bus plunged down the bridge before it arrived in Legazpi. It was a crash scene without the crash scene. The bus is seen crawling slowly across the bridge, and then the remaining characters – including Helen and Lillian – fade out from the screen one by one. The scene was confusing at first; only when a television or radio report is heard does it become clear what happened. Perhaps, the film’s conclusion was Lao’s way of saying that sometimes, the journey matters more than the destination. Maybe Lao wanted to show that life is a journey by bus: long, winding, exciting, tragic. But somehow, it felt like Lao just wanted an easy way out. He didn’t know what to do with the characters so he just killed them. “Biyaheng Lupa" was a 90-minute bus ride that left the terminal on a high note but crashed in the end. Perhaps the best review for the film came from the audience who viewed it. At the film’s premiere, a group of friends exited the theater discussing its merits. One of them praised the film for its bold point of view. The more clueless one hailed it as avante garde. But the wiser one cut the two and said, “Kahit avante garde pa ‘yan dapat may point yan. Pointless yung film." She drove home the point. – GMANews.TV Biyaheng Lupa won the Cinemanila’s Digital Lokal Grand Jury Prize