There’s a moment in writer-director Rafael Manuel’s often brilliant, always enthralling feature debut, Filipiñana, an expansion of his award-winning 2021 short, where Clara (Carmen Castellanos), the American-born-and-raised niece of a wealthy Filipino businessman, Renato (Carlitos Siguion-Reyna), refuses to bend — or rather, break — the rules and accept a penalty in an otherwise meaningless game of golf. Her personal, pink-clad caddie, Ina (Isabel Sicat), chides Clara for the latter's intransigence. Ina reminds Clara that her uncle regularly “bends” the rules (cheats), as do the other elites at the golf resort where the game unfolds. For Clara, it’s a momentary, perhaps all-too-brief, moment of moral and ethical clarity: She recognizes the social, political, and cultural stratification of the golf club and resort as a...
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