Cavite

Directed and Written by: Neil Dela Llana &Ian Gamazon
Starring: Ian Gamazon

I love guerilla cinema. Cavite starts off letting you know it's guerilla method right from the get go. As the main character walks through the airport you notice that it's not shot cinematically - it's shot sneakily. They stole shots in the airport, pretending to be tourists making home videos. I love it.

Cavite is the work of two men with an idea and almost nothing else to go with it. Even in this age of digital narrative, you still need a nice bankroll to get anything done. Digital productions hit theaters costing millions of dollars to make, despite the fact that you can get 6 tapes at Costco for under $25. Cavite takes it all back to the roots. For $10K the two filmmakers bought a camera, plane tickets, and ... an egg.

Cavite follows an everyman character of Adam who heads back to his home in the Philippines for his father's funeral. Upon his arrival he becomes alarmed when his family isn't there to pick him up, his alarm escalates to full fledged terror when he receives a phone call informing him that they've been kidnapped. The terrorist calling Adam makes his demands: simply do everything he says, and nothing else, or his family will be killed. The terrorist then barks orders to Adam telling him where to go, what to do, how to do it, etc.

Ok, it does sound a little bit familiar. Phone Booth was based around the same sort of idea where an omniscient figure steps into the life of an ordinary, unwilling character, only to force him to do things against his will. In Phone Booth, the caller on the other end was more of a God character - do as I say or I shall strike thee down. Cavite is much more reasonable - I have control of your family and I will extort what I want from you. Phone Booth had the God character force the dreamy Colin Farrell character to own up to lies and previous deceptions, giving him redemption, confession, all those other noble biblical truths. Such is not the case in Cavite. In Cavite the terrorist wants what's good for him, what will assist him. A much more identifiable character by far.

Character is what Cavite comes down to, more than anything else. Yes, there is the crucial element of what will happen to Adam's family, but more than anything, it's about the relationship between the new-age kidnapper and the kidnappee. Cavite does an excellent job in showing the dynamic for all it's worth, they grow together, they grow apart, they establish a sort of Patty Hearst Stockholm syndrome sort of thing, then break away - all while being believable in exploring the relationship, instead of being inconsistent in their relationship.

Along the way, we see the Philippines from the eyes of an outsider. What results is that we have the fictional story mesh with the reality of the area that gets us more involved than any straightforward documentary could have. Culture is explored, and we're able to interact with it, as we can identify with the outsider. It's really interesting stuff.

We've seen digital movies before that were made for nothing. Austin favorite "Dear Pillow" cost $4000 and looked like a movie that was made for more, except it was made on video, not film. Cavite looks like a movie made for nothing, and rightfully so. Instead of taking the qualities of video as a negative, Cavite embraces it. It looks like somebody grabbed a video camera as fast as they could and just ran after the guy. It serves its purpose wonderfully.

Cavite comes through with some interesting points about terrorism, Islamic struggle and looks into how people relate to each other in an extreme situation. I really, really enjoyed this movie. I felt like I learned a lot, and was more engaged than Phone Booth (though, I still like that movie a lot).

I guess it goes to show that Colin Farrell can't make any movie good. Who would've thought?

4/5
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