Asog

Asog, dir. Seán Devlin (叶世民), 2023 Canada/Philippines/USA, 101 min., in Tagalog and Waray with English subtitles, small portions in English without subtitles👍

Tuesday, June 25, 2024, 3:30 PM, Roxie

Asog

not available in the Digital Screening Room streaming encore

First of all, the title refers to a traditional Filipino healer. The women healers were called Babaylan, but there were also men who looked like women, who wore long clothes and long hair, called Asog. This film is a “docu-fiction,” with substantial amounts of documentary footage, and also several of the actors, including the two protagonists, playing themselves. However, some of the other characters and some of the situations are amalgams or simply fictional.

Typhoon Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Yolanda, took a massive toll on the people of the Philippines, their homes, their livelihoods, and even the land itself. Of course, the brunt of the devastation fell on the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, the people struggling just to get by, and was compounded by the greed of wealthy people and corporations who tried to force people off the land they had held for generations in order to make way for expensive tourist resorts and other forms of exploitation.

“Jaya” (the lead actor, playing themself) was on the brink of having a television show of their own when Yolanda destroyed the studio, forcing Jaya to take a job as a teacher, but they aren’t very good at it and have to leave. They see a ray of hope in the Ms. Gay Sicogon contest, and decide to pursue the dreams of fame and fortune. (Sicogón is an island in the Iloilo province of the Eastern Visayas region.) A former student, Arnel (pictured on the right, playing himself), is also trying to get to Sicogón to find his father. They team up, meeting along the way various people who survived the typhoon, allowing plenty of pointed commentary about climate change, classism, colonialism, and homophobia. Unfortunately, the story moves slowly, with lots of melodramatic tangents, and takes a long time to get to some sort of resolution. I had the luxury of watching large parts of it at 1.5X, and even some parts at 2X, but it still dragged in many places. Recommended, if you have the patience.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram / Facebook: @AsogFilm • YouTube channel • preview • Wikipedia • Sean Devlin