tlavideo.com

Review

Taking his cue from television interviews with "comfort women" (Filipino women forced into prostitution for occupying Japanese soldiers), director Gil Porte's unique drama focuses on the gays, drag queens, and transgendered people who also suffered at the hands of the occupying forces.

The time is the present. Walter Dempster Jr., alias Markova, a resident in the "Golden Gays" rest home in Manilla and he decides he must speak out. He begins to tell an initially skeptical reporter of his wartime life. He reveals that as a child, the flamboyant Walter was constantly bullied by his older brother. He becomes Walterina – a flaming adolescent drag queen. When the Japanese occupy the Philippines he finds himself suffering terrible violence from the soldiers who originally believed him to be female. Eventually, he becomes the regal den mother to a flamboyant – and at times bitchy – group of fellow cross-dressers who spend their time in forced sex work. When the country is liberated, post-war life has its own set of difficulties for Markova.

A great, if unusual, Filipino melodrama peppered with amazing production numbers that must be seen to be believed. A metaphor for the political and sexual situation in the Philippines: from oppressive ultra-conservativism to a slow but progressive ongoing march towards some kind of liberation. And for trivia fans: the young, adult and older Markova are Dolphy Quizon and his two real-life sons; keeping it in the family has never had such resonance. (English, Tagalog with English subtitles)

Darren Chadwick