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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Bitter Pill: Looking at Family from Opposite Poles, March 16, 2005
CLOSER TO HOME is the product of writer/director Joseph Nobile who made this film in 1995 and is so committed to his work of love that he is still pounding the streets for an audience after ten years of festival awards and widely varying responses from the critics, both form the media and form the viewers. I think his fight is well worth his effort.
CLOSER TO HOME is in no way a highly polished, glitzy, Hollywood chick flick. This is not a film that leaves the audience whistling the credits tune while ambling out of the theater talking about fluff and superficial situations. This little two hour film may reference such hits a 'Love is a Many Splendored Thing' or 'Madame Butterfly' or 'Sayonara', but the references are only to the ages old concept of the mail order bride market. Joseph Nobile has the courage to move beyond the pink bubbly dreams of love conquering all and instead examines the bipolar needs and inner histories of why the individuals on both ends of arranged marriages (especially those involving imported brides from poor countries) can encounter more tragedy than happy victories.
Nobile wisely divides his film between the Philippines and New York City, drawing many parallels between the monetary poverty of the one with the emotional poverty of the other. He opens up the atmosphere of the Philippines by allowing us to see the various strata of life from the bars, the streets of Manila, the factories, the farms still employing carabao to work the meager fields. From this palette he plucks one beautiful young girl Dalisay (Madeline Ortaliz) and explains why her need to provide for her family and her young sister in need of cardiac surgery instills the drive to go to America to find a husband and requisite funds to send money home. After the difficult task of convincing her family that her departure is a sound solution to the family's financial needs, she consents to be a mail order bride, follows the disparate regulations and problems of obtaining a Visa and departs her beloved family for the promise of the American Dream.
Meanwhile, in New York, we meet Dean (John Michael Bolger), an ex-Merchant Marine who tasted the flavor of the East and longs for a Filipina bride to fill the vacuum of not having grown up with an intact family. His sister and friends are angered that Dean will not sell the family flat, a move that would provide financial escape from their lives of loneliness and disenchantment with their lack of meaningful family history. Dean sees importing Dalisay as his bride will provide him with all of the love his dissolute life has eschewed.
Dalisay arrives in the US, tries to uphold her wobbly dreams, but eventually must accept the fact that she does not love the intended destitute groom and must forge her own life to fulfill her commitment to her family. Dean is crushed by the failure of this ultimate dream but out of the chards of his ideals he finds a semblance of family after all.
This films is not without flaws: though the photography is beautiful in places it is poorly choreographed in others, making extended scenes of dialogue feel more like a ping pong game than a creative exploration of character. Some judicious editing would tighten the drama and while that may exclude some of the characters in the drama, it would make the focus stronger. The actors vary greatly in credibility and the 'at will' interchange between Tagalog and English can become distracting.
But in the long run, CLOSER TO HOME is an important alternative view of the American Dream and a forceful and thoughtful one at that. It is a film that if taken for its message is a film to remember and cause reflection on the daily interpersonal tragedies that can become too easily ignored in this busy world we have created. Grady Harp, March 05
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Close to a masterpiece, May 9, 2005
Much of the effectiveness of this deeply affecting and ultimately tragic film is due to what is not shown and what is not said.
Dalisay (Madeline Ortaliz) is a young and pretty Filipino girl who--perhaps among other strategies--puts herself up as a mail order bride in order to get to America to make money to help her family and get medical help for her younger sister who has a heart condition. Maybe that is her motivation. What makes this movie so beguiling and intriguing is the ambiguous nature of Dalisay's desire. She is a "good girl, a proper girl but...(I am reminded of an old song)...one of the roving kind."
She tells her family that she will work in America and send them money. She doesn't tell them that she is a mail order bride. This is the essential duplicity that Dalisay enters into. She has a cousin in America who will help her with the details. Perhaps this is planned. We really don't know. Perhaps she is waiting until she sees her intended and will play it by ear from there. Again, the ambiguity of her desire--and indeed the ambiguity of anyone's desire, especially that of a young girl from a poor rural family in a poor country who has been making her living sewing clothes in a sweat shop--is what intrigues us. No one's motives are completely pristine. There is always an element of self-service involved, even in the most humanitarian ventures, even if it is only that of being the one who is doing good. Dalisay is being good, but one gets the sense as the film develops that she is being good partially for Dalisay. She has seen what it is like to work in a sweat shop and she has seen what happens to the girls who give their bodies away. She is wiser than that. She has a plan.
Director Joseph Nobile who co-wrote the script with Ruben Arthur Nicdao overplays the idyllic rural setting in the early scenes--the good father and family, their hard work, the happy, if poor, children, the bright and ambitious daughter in whom they believe. They are of course preyed upon by middle men and money lenders, but they hold their heads high. I think Nobile would have been wise to cut out about half of these opening sequences in the Philippines because they are too cloying, they too much recall the cliches of the good and noble peasants being used by the evil power structure.
However, there is something to be said for the build up. We do see that although Dalisay brings gifts to her siblings when she visits, and she seems delighted to see the children run alongside the bus, there is some restraint in her affection, some slight distance from the little ones and from her father and mother. The family affection, although seemingly demonstrated, struck me as lukewarm. Perhaps that was the intent so as to account for Dalisay's leaving them.
The film begins slowly. I would have given up on it had I not known of the film's reputation. I stayed with it and I am glad I did because once Dalisay gets to America about halfway through, the story becomes riveting and develops into a powerful tragedy of conflicting desires, told in stark realism and beautifully acted by Ortaliz and John Michael Bolger who plays Dean.
He is one of live's pathetic losers who has a dream, an island girl of his own, to love him and to serve him and to be his wife and constitute the loving family that he doesn't have. Ah, but the intrusion of reality! We see that although Dalisay is good and non-exploitive herself, she has her own dreams and they are not likely to include an over-the-hill, broken-down and drunken cabbie, a guy with a dysfunctional family, a guy who can't keep a job and wears too much cologne. When he says he loves her we know there is no way she can say she loves him.
An important scene that foreshadows the end catches Dalisay and her cousin Tess at the kitchen table in the apartment. They are joking in Tagalog about Dean's physical attributes. We can see how cozy they are, the two women in their shared culture, and how alien Dean is as he comes upon them and doesn't understand what they are saying. Ultimately we feel sorry for Dean. We pity him. Yet we understand and appreciate Dalisay's decision. She does what she has to do, and she does it with dignity and honor.
A final point: When Dean is seen crying near the end, we the viewers know why he is crying, but his family does not. For the audience the tears are ambiguous and his tragedy is twofold, just as Dalisay's motivations are ambiguous and twofold.
This is very close to masterpiece. It is original and faithfully done without choosing sides or assigning blame one way or the other. Like a Greek tragedy, the end is fated and due to human frailty rather than any conscious iniquity.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
de-Ornamentalism and de-Orientalism, March 20, 2005
What started out with some promise with movies like Gil M. Portes' Mga Munting Tinig (Small Voices) - depending for sure on one's expectation level - juxtaposed against other Filipino made or themed movies - Closer to Home seems a little, well, [viewer can fill in the blank]. If, however, Closer to Home comes to presence for you without a jaded perspective and you allow the film to be what it is - then it could be a very illuminating experience.
Closer to Home is a series of broken dreams. Caught between a rock and hard place, Dalisay (Madeline Ortaliz) who needs to get her sister a much needed operation is forced to 'sacrifice' herself and is eventually picked up by Dean (John Michael Bolger) who is, in ignorant 'Orientalist' caricature seeking marriage or permanent happiness with a 'Filipino' wife. The two are matched together and the movie is an exploration of what seems like a conspiracy to keep the two apart. The problem is - the two never really seem to have ever been together at all - so we can stop pretending it is a romance. Therein lies one of several issues I see as problematic. First, I found it very difficult to empathize with the characters on any level because they seemed to be inhabiting two very different worlds - or that may have been purposeful by Director and Producer Joseph Nobile - I was never really sure. Second, it has been posited that the movie is a metaphor for a sort of east/west - Philippine/America dichotomy - I doubt THAT was purposeful. I will say this much for Closer to Home - it is unique in that it inhabits a liminal space: neither Hollywood sappy with a happy ending nor does it situate itself in that sordid realm of Philippine cinema - the ever popular melodramatic or 'bomba' (that ambiguous exploitation/misogynistic soft core that is so popular with Filipino viewers). For that, if anything, Closer to Home has to be recognized and celebrated.
Without a doubt, Closer to Home is a cut above the sigawan-sampalan (screaming and slapping) or even bomba (soft core) that all too often - without waxing moralistic here - liters Filipino cinema. Now, we need to keep in mind that this is not a homegrown movie - it is an American offering. This would explain why it is not 'Filipino' but does it live up to the potential of a gritty film festival level movie? That is another question entirely. If you take Closer to Home purely as text - the read is simple and linear. Does Closer to Home falls within the realm of risky art house? Perhaps not. Despite straying from both a Filipino or a Hollywood formula Closer to Home took no real art house risks. Closer to Home, as mentioned previously, is linear and thats alright. Closer to Home is illuminating in that it aims at a sense of realism and does not pull any punches. In Closer to Home Nobile does not try to window dress the risks embedded or subsumed in mail-order bride situations.
Closer to Home had much to offer by way of demystification or de-Ornamentalism (and yes, even de-Orientalism). In Closer to Home there were no clear lines drawn between good and bad. Everyone was both good and bad. It has sort of sunk into common sense understanding that unions of this kind are often one sided and riddled with male centered exploitation, and often end up tragic. Closer to Home is a reification of that notion. So before we start running to embrace Dalisay and paint her as victim, we really need to squarely face that the exploitation is mutual. It was really difficult to feel with or for Dalisay because she showed neither warmth nor possibility towards Dean. Her broken dream was that Dean refused to let her work - not that of a promised romance that failed. It seemed like Dalisay came into this scenario planning for the 'relationship' to fail - so she never allowed it to get started. Granted that this whole scenario is dysfunctional to begin with, it seemed really difficult, despite the personality demise of Dean to paint him as the sole villain and 'poor' defenseless Dalisay as the sole victim. In Closer to Home, everyone is both villain and victim.
Miguel Llora
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