A review of Bertubin’s Kurap (Blink):
“If you don’t want to be used, if you don’t want to be duped … don’t ever blink!” Ronaldo Bertubin’s feisty, street-beat melodrama is wise to all the risks in a dodgy district like Quiapo in Manila. Small-time crook Ambet and his sister Luchie live in an abandoned building. A high proportion of Ambet’s dubious earnings goes on treatment for Luchie’s glaucoma, and he tries to shield her from exposure to his varied sex-life (women and men) and his line of work. But when middle-class photojournalist Marlon comes calling with a proposition that Ambet should rat on his buddies in the criminal underworld–for the sake of TV news reports which will inevitably lead to police busts–the money doesn’t quite explain why Ambet agrees.
Blink sometimes looks and sounds like a thriller, but it’s actually a fresh (and, uh, homo-erotic) take on the slum melodrama as developed by the likes of Lino Brocka. Where Brocka tended to focus on family relationships, Bertubin is more into larger social tapestries; his guitar-driven style surrounds the central characters with a continuous collage of street-life and snatched glances. And it’s paced like a rocket. Most directors would need 90 minutes to tell this story, but Bertubin bangs through it in little more than an hour. “If you blink, you may get lost…” [Source]
“Kurap” will have its premiere night (Director’s Cut) on November 8 (Sat) 7 PM at Cine Adarna in UP Diliman, QC. Regular showing in Robinsons theaters start on November 12, Wednesday
Photo credits: Dan Santos and Ian Felix Alquiros.
For the movie trailer, click here.
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