The Man in the Lighthouse 2007
Ang lalake sa parola (original title)
1h 48min | Drama , Romance | 3 September 2007 (Philippines)
Storyline:
Mateo is a lighthouse caretaker dating a teacher Suzette. The small town they are in is trying to increase tourism. Jerome stumbles across Mateo and Suzette having sex, whilst he is on holiday from Manila. A local a gay man, who pays local teenage boys for sex, talks to Mateo about the negative aspects of being gay in the Philippines. According to local legend, a lighthouse fairy seduces desirable men who then never marry. Mateo’s relationship with Jerome leads to self reevaluation.
User review:
Though I laud indie filmmakers and their attempt to make films which are not formulaic and mainstream, I cant help but frown on Ang Lalake sa Parola. I can see the labor of love poured into making this film, the director and writer have good intentions, but they just produced a pretentious, flimsy and dull depiction of what being gay is.
There have been countless movies that deals with homosexuality and majority of this films center on society’s view on it. I just cringe when a gay filmmaker makes a gay movie about how gays are treated badly, discriminated, abused and made fun of. I mean, if these gay filmmakers continue on portraying gays as like this on film, when will the prejudice stop if the same people view themselves that way?
The way the whole movie unfolded was just lackluster. Even the cinematography, though not bad, wasn’t exciting, they had a good locale but they never took advantage of the raw beauty of it. The writing too was awful. The beach scene where Mateo and Jerome “tell” the audience how great and fun the water was just laughable. We know they’re enjoying why even say it?
The music was uninspiring and lifeless. Music should be as equally as powerful as the images, so as to give a “signature” effect of the film making it memorable.
As to the parallelism between the old cemetery guy and Mateo’s supposed “journey” of discovering oneself, this is where it got too ambitious, the movie tried to give us a lot but in return became lacking.
Director: Joselito Altarejos
Writers: Lex Bonife (story), Joselito Altarejos (story)
Stars: Harry Laurel, Jennifer Lee, Justin De Leon
Country: Philippines
Language: Tagalog | Filipino
Release Date: 3 September 2007 (Philippines)
Also Known As: The Man in the Lighthouse
Filming Locations: Punta Malabrigo Resort, Malabrigo, Lobo, Batangas, Philippines
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1082022/
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 704 MiB
Duration : 1 h 20 min
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 1 221 kb/s
