Filipiñana

Rafael Manuel’s debut feature is an extraordinarily confident satire set on a luxury golf course. Here wealthy Chinese tourists and successful businessmen are catered to by all-female hostesses, caddies, and even tee-girls at the driving range. This is where 17-year-old Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto) is starting out, and she has much to learn.

Manuel has a remarkable eye for the strangeness of this environment, unfurling one striking composition after another. Jacques Tati seems to be an influence — the comedy of geometry and colour, and a kind of subtle, languid surrealism. But this also an implicitly political satire, focused on power and privilege, with the golf club as a metaphor for the Philippines. Word to the wise: You will want to sit through the end credits on this one.

A great film can be recognized from its first shot, and that’s how it is with Filipiñana, which I knew absolutely nothing about in advance and which grabbed me from the very beginning, announcing itself as a masterwork.

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Filipiñana is a film of great formal poise that hides a discourse about power, patriarchy, corruption and violence beneath a placid surface of sprinklers, golf carts and obssessively tended greens. A rich, densely cinematic film, it is a stunning assured debut from young Filipino filmmaker Rafael Manuel.

Lee Marshall, Screen International

A marvel of form and control, creating a work laden with symbols and suggestion.

Peter Howell, Toronto Star