Whatever
you do, do not stereotype these homeless children, the so-called “batang hamog”
or “children of haze,” living by their wits on the streets of Manila. For
instance, Rashid cannot say he has no family to live with. He has too much
family, thanks to his uber-traditional Muslim father, who keeps marrying “stepmothers”
that clearly do not like having him around. Instead, he builds a surrogate
support system with three other homeless youths, but an ill-fated robbery will
break them apart in Ralston Jover’s Hamog
(Haze)
(trailer here),
which screens during the annual New Filipino Cinema series at the Yerba Buena
Arts Center.
Fifteen-year-old
Jinky was cast out of her home by a drug-addled, mentally unbalanced mother,
finding acceptance in the arms of the inhalant-huffing Tisoy. Eight-year-old
Moy is the group’s mascot and the resourceful Rashid is the glue who holds them
together. Their plans for this day are not so different from any other, but
they pick the wrong cabbie to try to rob. Rashid and Tisoy make off with his
cash, but the tightly-wound Danny catches Jinky and poor Moy is fatally struck
by a delivery van during their escape.
At
this point, the narrative splits in two, as we first watch the loyal Rashid try
to raise the necessary funds to give Moy a proper funeral and a permanent
resting place rather than the Philippine equivalent of Potter’s field. During
his campaign, Rashid makes an unsatisfying homecoming, briefly meeting the new
stepmother his father intends to marry during a ceremony he is politely asked
not to attend.
Meanwhile,
Jinky and Danny must contend with each other. Much to his frustration, the cops
want nothing to do with a minor and the children’s services bureaucracy is a
Kafkaesque joke. Since Jinky desperately wants to avoid the abusive and
unsanitary conditions of the juvenile foster home, Danny brings her home to his
tenement apartment to serve as a live-in maid. While this arrangement smacks of
forced servitude, Jinky seems to willing accept it, but Danny’s wildly
dysfunctional relationship with his girlfriend Paula and their third roommate
Bernard is probably not sustainable.
Most
of Hamog shares a thematic and
aesthetic kinship with Brillante Mendoza’s street-level, issue-oriented films,
such as Slingshot, written by Jover.
However, it takes a weird third act detour into gritty noir terrain worthy of James
Cain or Jim Thompson. Yet, Jover presents it so matter-of-factly, it never jars
the viewer.
It
also helps that the extraordinary young actress Teri Malvar, the Screen International
Rising Star Asia Award winner at last year’s NYAFF, is the one selling it. She
manages to be simultaneously heartbreaking and chilling as the abused and abandoned
Jinky. As the delinquent and the cabbie, she and OJ Mariano (remarkably, the
runner up on a Pop Idol-style competition
now branching out into acting) develop a strange and evolving relationship that
will keep viewers on their toes.