Left on the beach
“Hanggang pier lang” (Just until the pier) was a derogatory phrase coined soon after World War II to describe Filipino women whose American GI boyfriends returned to the United States. Left at the pier abandoned and forlornly waving goodbye, the women had to cope with the consequences of their romance, often a biracial child.
Well, call Chona “hanggang sa beach lang.” She was just 14 when she was left pregnant and abandoned by someone in the crew of the movie “Apocalypse Now.” Shot in the late 1970s in the Philippines, the film had some segments with American GIs surfing while clouds of napalm burst in the background. These were filmed in the vicinity of Baler, and Chona was among the young people fascinated by the presence of the “handsome white men” roaming their town. Left behind by the departing film crew, Chona had since clung to her belief that the father of her son was director Francis Ford Coppola, after whom she named her son Ford. Chona’s staunch belief, which she pursues to the extent of demanding a DNA test to prove Coppola’s paternity, is at the heart of the story of “Apocalypse Child.”
Baler, a narrator says at the film’s opening, is a town that thrives and feeds on myths. One is the astonishing escape of seven of the town’s pioneer families fleeing from a tsunami in the 1700s that wiped out the rest of the town’s population.
Another is the months-long siege of the town church to where Spanish authorities fled at the outbreak of the revolution. The colonizers, it is believed, survived on food supplies surreptitiously brought in by their Filipino girlfriends.
The latest myth, with some basis in fact, concerns the same film crew of “Apocalypse Now” who, aside from their discarded girlfriends, also left behind the surfboards used in the shoot. These were then retrieved by fishermen and used by the boys of Baler to learn surfing, which is how this town on the western coast of Luzon became the center of surfing in the Philippines long before it figured in the consciousness of the surfing world.
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This is how we get to meet Ford (Sid Lucero), who has grown up to become a champion surfer and surfing instructor, frittering away his life and literally going with the flow and floating with the tides, aimless, seemingly headed to nowhere.
His mother Chona (stage actor Ana Abad Santos) is still hot in her pursuit of Coppola while making ends meet by supplementing Ford’s income from his surfing students with money she makes as an all-around gofer for the local political powers-that-be. One of them is Rich (RK Bagatsing), a childhood bosom buddy of Ford’s who has since become a congressman, taking the political reins from his father, the late governor.
Into this mix of characters enters Serena (Gwen Zamora), Rich’s fiancée, who is brought to Baler to be introduced to the congressman’s constituents. At the moment, Ford is entwined with Fiona (Annicka Dolonius), who is waiting for her grandmother to die and fills in the remaining time with surfing lessons and shacking up with Ford. Jordan (Archie Alemania) is the remaining cog in this complex wheel of characters—observer, referee, ardent suitor of the mercurial Fiona.
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Director Mario Cornejo (who cowrote the movie with producer Monster Jimenez) describes the story arc as “about getting older, [about] becoming an adult… looking back at the stories that define you, and realizing they’re just stories, and those stories can change if you want them to.”
For Ford, the defining story is that of his paternity, but at the movie’s start he puzzlingly rejects it, while tolerating his mother’s obsession about it.
“Apocalypse Child” is really the story of Ford’s and Chona’s journey to truth, as well as Ford’s and Rich’s lifelong struggle with the secrets that threaten their friendship and complicate their relationships with women.
At the premiere of the movie on the first night of the Quezon City Film Festival, Cornejo credited his cast with attacking their roles with fierceness and intensity, even if he supposedly exclaimed in frustration during the filming that managing his cast amid the temptations of surf and sun was like “herding cats.”
Only Lucero, Abad Santos and Alemania could be said to be experienced actors, and even then they owe their filmographies largely to indie films. Lucero is enigmatic and maybe even as stoic as Ford, but his low-key approach is fitting for a laid-back surfer who conquers the tides by going along with them, allowing the ocean to dictate his place and pace. Abad Santos allows herself to be deglamorized in her role as the kooky mom who is still trying to grow into adulthood with her son, even as she allows signs of an inner turmoil to seep through.
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But even as virtual newcomers, Zamora, Bagatsing and Dolonius hold their own in this quirky cast of characters thrown together in turmoil and deception. No one comes to the situation with clean hands, all being needy and wanting more. But the newbie actors bring to their characters honesty and rawness, and refreshing bravery.
Gorgeously shot in Baler, the movie might leave many seasick, with scenes water-soaked and moviegoers almost feeling the sun warming their skin and the sand gritty in the teeth. The filmmakers describe “Apocalypse Child” as a comedy, though the funniest line comes at the end. The tragedy lies buried, ultimately, in the characters’ refusal to confront the secrets that have soured their relationships, with the movie closing, as expected, on the tides of the Pacific, as the sun dies on the horizon.
