Jorrybell Agoto in Filipiñana
A luxury golf course takes on a multitude of meanings in Filipiñana, few of which have anything to do with golf.
An oasis of vibrant, well-manicured greenery amid the Philippines’ drought-stricken capital city serves as the primary setting of writer/director Rafael Manuel’s bravura debut feature, a biting satire in which the haves and have-nots are just a swing of the nine-iron away from one another. The sight of underpaid employees dancing as their wealthy guests arrive may have you thinking this is merely another White Lotus–style riff on class tensions, but Manuel’s approach differs in one key regard: he’s actually from the country where his story takes place.
Far from a heavy-handed message movie, however, Filipiñana is first and foremost a sensory delight. The lovely, deceptively simple camerawork by cinematographer Xenia Patricia announces itself early and often: a POV shot of passengers on a tour bus watching as their guide (Filipino social-media personality Pipay Kipay) explains local customs in one scene, a shot of a little girl as seen from the other side of a sprinkler in another. Nearly every frame has something that draws your eye to the periphery of the screen, whether it be priests stretching before a round of golf or a mango falling from a tree. Filipiñana brings to mind the early work of Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul in its sensual, almost palpable evocation of its Southeast Asian setting: you can almost feel the heat and humidity emanating from the other side of the screen.
The story, which takes place over a single languorous day, primarily follows 17-year-old “tee girl” Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto) as she tees up balls at the driving range so the golfers don’t have to do it themselves. Her newest customer isn’t especially talented, and she worries that he may strike her by accident; when she shares this concern with a more seasoned coworker, Isabel is assured that getting hit doesn’t hurt that badly and tends to result in a larger tip. Later, she’s tasked with returning a putter to the club’s elusive president — a seemingly simple errand that reveals both a surprising connection and the full extent of the gulf between them.
“You really have to keep yourself hydrated out here,” one of the club’s VIP members (Carlos Siguion-Reyna) explains to his niece Clara (Carmen Castellanos) in a more relaxed scene, “a golfer died last week from heatstroke.” Whether the same has ever happened to an employee of the course is beyond the scope of his knowledge and concern; he’s certainly unaware that the tour bus full of wealthy tourists we saw earlier nearly collided with a group of locals lining up for rationed water en route to the club that very morning. Manuel isn’t subtle in his social commentary, but he is incisive — and besides, these aren’t exactly subtle times we’re living in.
There’s little music in Filipiñana, with birdsong, buzzing insects, and other ambient sounds serving as a kind of diegetic soundtrack. The effect is meditative, with long, slowly zooming shots of dying trees and sleeping characters immersing you deeper into this world like a hypnotist making your eyelids heavy. Some may find the pacing too similar to that of a leisurely golf game, but a quiet tension hums in the background of every sedate moment.
Filipiñana is first and foremost a sensory delight.
In between the two extremes is Clara, who actually treats the club’s employees as equals and whose less enlightened uncle wants her to come back from New York and work with him. The problem with his company, he laments, is that all its best, brightest minds complain about it and move abroad rather than work to improve it from within. It isn’t much of a leap in logic to suggest that he believes the Philippines itself suffers from the same brain-drain problem, not that he seems to understand — much less sympathize with — Clara and her generation’s motivation for seeking greener pastures.
An expansion of Manuel’s 2020 short of the same name, Filipiñana was executive-produced by Jia Zhangke, one of mainland China’s most renowned — and similarly political — filmmakers. It premiered at Sundance, where it won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, before screening at the Berlinale and other festivals en route to its theatrical release. It’s a movie you’ll want to keep watching after the credits start rolling — not because there’s a superhero-style scene halfway through but because the main action continues over them. Though certainly an evocative stylistic flourish, it’s also Manuel’s way of telling us something important. If the societal conditions you’re decrying don’t end when your movie does, maybe the story shouldn’t either.
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By Michael Nordine, © 2025
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