The Devil as a Forlorn Woman by Don Jaucian ...

The Devil as a Forlorn Woman
by Don Jaucian

Mapang-akit (2011)
D: John Torres

John Torres’s Mapang-akit isn’t necessarily an invasion of perceptions as much as Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes erases the magnificence of Bruno Schulz’s prose. Mapang-akit and Tree of Codes are formed by what may seem as erasure to some, with Foer dismantling Schulz’s book and Torres imposing his own kaleidioscopic visions on a residual footage for a supposed collaboration with a Danish filmmaker. But really, what Foer and Torres do is a creation of a Frankenstein monster of sorts, using old parts to tell their tales that are both menacingly resilient despite the protests and qualms. Both Mapang-akit and Tree of Codes retain the original charms of their birthplaces, with Mapang-akit operating as a portrait of a small village ambling along the most ordinary of circumstances.

Mapang-akit appears to be in shambles, with the camera hiding from what seems to be a screen, separating the spectators from the film’s subjects: a community in Antique where they speak in fear of a woman, or as Torres would like us to believe. Prior to the start of the film in one screening, Torres warned audiences, that, just like in his third full-length Ang Ninanais, if they could understand the language spoken by the people in the film, they should disregard it and follow the subtitles instead. Torres has created his own myth using only the setting, mannerisms, and curiosities of his subjects, something that has alarmed audiences. Torres uses a rather deadly weapon which endangers the cultural significance of his subjects. Instead of dipping his feet into the lives of his subjects (collaborator Che Villanueva later shot additional footage, being more familiar with the place), Torres follows the people in this village, letting them talk, observing them in their most intimate conversations and daily ritual while allowing us to see them in a tweaked perspective.

The film builds a rather chilling narrative of Anita, a suspected aswang who beguiles the men of the village with her beauty and later leads them to their death. Like the uncertainty of hearsay, Torres leads us into the precipice of the village, uncovering stories after stories as more of the village folk share their own tales of how Anita has wrecked their lives: missing sons and husbands, mysterious returns and illnesses, and the unexplainable dread that Anita has spread all over the village. In one of the film’s final scenes, the camera follows Anita walking along the thick foliage of the village, maybe looking for another man to lure with her beauty. We hear strange noises, her footfalls sounding like the clawing of a creature hellbent on feeding. Torres’s Anita is an old woman, whose face has lines as gnarled as the trees that surround her, but we fear her, with the shrouded atmosphere of dread that the villagers, who seem to both repel and revere her, have created.

Despite the lack of Torres’s signature poetry and voice-over, Mapang-akit bears his stamp as a filmmaker. He conjures a supernatural tale that looks as ordinary and idyllic as a pastoral landscape yet it teems with the most frightening aspects of rural life that has fueled the imaginations of many. Like the storytellers of old, Torres tricks us into believing that the ordinariness of our environment cloaks a more mystifying truth, twisting hushed exchanges into grim tales of engkantos and seducing nymphs. It is a device that is both personal and universal, forming a tapestry of perspectives tinkling like a music box that heralds the start of a tale that will keep us up at night, long after the last word has been uttered.