Evil in holy places
The search for a serial killer leaving his victims in the middle of a notorious garbage dumpsite in Payatas arouses the curiosity of two Jesuit priests.
The killings no longer make news and thus the general apathy of the public including police authorities.
But Fr. Augusto Saenz (Nonie Buencamino) and Fr. Jerome Lucero (Sid Lucero) are made of sterner stuff and would not just give up.
They are joined by an equally aggressive investigative journalist Joanna Bonifacio (Carla Humphries) and together, they embark on a thankless job that got curiouser and curiouser as they make fairly good progress.
Of the seven victims, they notice they are somewhere between ages 14 and above or below.
Then the heinous crime happens right after a medical mission on a Saturday.
Then they find out the persons of interest work somewhere near the periphery of a parish church.
Uncovering one clue after another makes up for the interesting highlights of this Filipino crime drama.
The victims are mostly living in poverty and recipients of feeding programs of some concerned foundations.
But as their efforts get noticed, so is the alarm of authorities. Church officials make no effort to encourage the investigation and police authorities are more interested in media exposure than finding the real culprit.
With this as a background, the sleuthing of the two padres and the investigative journalist gets nowhere. But they don’t give up. Until they find the clues that lead them to the profile of the possible killer.
They are invited to a night of opera at the CCP — Die Zauberflöte
(The Magic Flute) — and at the lobby where the powerful and the influential congregate, they find out their efforts are being discouraged by no less than the people who are supposed to do something.
The two padres end up in a coffee shop where they admit their nauseating CCP encounter nearly ruined their appetite for Mozart.
This crime drama works very well because the writers leave a lot to the imagination.
When one victim of molestation is finally traced, he narrates a tale of degradation that will make the listeners cringe. And poor parents admit they were helpless about the whole thing.
And when he is found looking disturbed, if, distraught and thirsting for blood, you realize the sheer magnitude of the crime.
Indeed, nothing prepared one for the bone-chilling impact of Raya Martin’s latest film Smaller
and Smaller Circles based on the novel of F.H. Batacan.
It is a well-fleshed out crime story set in urban Manila where the poor are always the prime target.
But the bigger horror is to contemplate that there are people in holy cloth and projecting saintly image in medical missions for the poor. The film horrified one the way
The Silence of the Lambs did and it is because some characters in the film had earlier figured in primetime news on television.
A film called Spotlight also dwelt on abuses of the young by men in holy cloth.
A book titled Altar of Secrets: Sex, Politics, and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church by the late award-winning journalist Aries Rufo dwelt on similar subject on a nationwide scale.
Buencamino and Lucero stood out as the concerned padres and their characterizations added to the sense of despair of the protagonists.
Humphries as the investigative journalist provides a good portrait of a well-rounded news person as she trades Voltaire quotations with Fr. Saenz in French. It turns out Fr. Saenz was Bonifacio’s teacher at Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris.
But nothing beats the image of the distraught and abused youth poignantly played by Jun Jun Quintana. He only figures at the end of the film but his portrayal is a grim reminder of what his character went through.
Nothing graphic is shown in the film but in the filmgoer’s mind, everything is quite clear and that’s where the horror resides. The chorus of a Christmas
oratorio that ends the film was both fitting and ironic.
Make this the crime drama of the year.
It deserves the Grade A rating from the Cinema Evaluation Board. Smaller and Smaller Circles opens in cinemas on Dec. 6. It features stellar performances by Christopher de Leon, Ricky Davao, Bembol Roco, TJ Trinidad, Madeline Nicolas and Mae Paner, among others.