On a lark, Jo and I watched this movie a few days ago. It was only being screened in a handful of movie theaters in the city, so with luck, that includes the most convenient movie theater for us. Lining up for the tickets was funny. Not only did we balk at the ridiculous ticket price, but we also felt a bit iffy, what with the number of men purchasing tickets, and fully expected the theater to be packed with men anticipating some thrills out of the movie.

Before the movie started: the Philippine National Anthem. I get a real kick out of that montage, particularly the part showing schoolroom-postcard photos of the country's presidents with their achievements written underneath. Magsaysay was the "Man of the Masses", Ramos stood for "Economic Development", Aquino for "People Power", and Estrada? "Centennial President." I expect Arroyo's to soon be modified to "Hello Garci."

But anyway. The movie. It's based on the sex video scandals that broke out sometime in 2004, with many people speculating if the people in the video were students from La Salle, St. Benilde, or if it took place somewhere in Indonesia, hence its other monicker "Bandung Scandal." (Oh gods, I just realized that I'm going to get a lot of people to this site now who are doing pervy searches on the Web.) But it's generally agreed upon that the people are Asian and are college-age, although I heard before that they're indeed CSB students. I don't know.

The film opens with the couple involved in the scandal having sex, which was quite a jolt, what with the movie running for only five minutes thus far. Afterwards, it showed a bunch of students being interviewed about the sex scandal that rocked their school, with some people saying they know the people involved and some volunteering information on rumors about the scandal. In the next scene, a young man played by Ryan Eigenmann (Could you believe I no longer remember the characters' names? Pathetic.) was getting a plastic-wrapped stack of DVDs from a seller in Quiapo. He didn't have the money to pay for it, so he took off and the sellers chased him to a dead end, whereupon the plastic ripped open, some DVDs fell out, and the people realized he's the dude in the sex video. Much hooting and admiration ensues.

But I won't go into a frame-by-frame account anymore, it's kind of tedious doing that. Basically, the movie:

showed that the guy was totally into the idea of watching himself getting busy on camera, so he borrowed his friend's video camera for the purpose (said friend later leaked the video to another friend so things snowballed from there)

showed that the girl (Jennifer Lee, who can't act) was bicurious, hence her videotaped tryst with another girl (Avi Siwa), who would sell herself even to shady producers and directors for a crack at stardom, hence she was less devastated by the scandal breaking out

showed a college that seemed more like a frigging high school, what with students being spoonfed topics and materials

showed college girls looking all dressed and made-up like hell

It was actually all right, though it's nothing I would ever watch again. It wasn't exactly a pornfest, although there were sex scenes aplenty, and some scenes have apparently been recreated as they took place in the real-life sex video. I fail to see the need to repeat those scenes twice in the movie, though. The timeline is a bit jiggly, but one should be able to follow it, no problem.

I must say once again that Jennifer Lee cannot act to save her life. There's this scene shot in Hong Kong where her character sought refuge to escape the scandal and she was sitting near a church and reading. One of her admirers from school caught a whiff of where she is and sat down next to her in a personal-space-violating kind of way. Several seconds after he sat down, she turned to him with a totally blank expression and said tonelessly, "Sheht. Oh my God. Anong ginagawa mo dito? (What are you doing here?)" Heehee.

I tend to like non-mainstream or indie films in this country. They look less staged, the dialogue's more natural, the look of the films are gritty and, er, realer, and most inmportantly, the acting is less awardworthy, which is good, because award-winning acting here generally means the actors have overacted themselves to death.

The ending's all right as well, with the characters appearing to have soldiered on with life nonetheless, although it was implied that Jennifer Lee's character leapt to her death after her admirer has sniffed her out of hiding. Or maybe that was just put in to illustrate one of the real-life scandal rumors that said the girl killed herself. Their parents were also interviewed, with the guy's parents saying their boy couldn't have done such a thing, which is a typical whitewashy but understandable reaction, and Avi Siwa's character's dad speaking pragmatically of the events, saying that what they did was normal anyway, everybody does it, but it just so happened that they caught it on video.

I say they should've done away with the sleazy poster and the sleazy title, and chosen something less blatant. It's actually an okay film, but people will shy away from it with a title like that.