‘Dayang Asu’ REVIEW: A Hostile Pampanga
‘Dayang Asu’ REVIEW: A Hostile Pampanga
Amor (Kelvin Vistan) hunts for a stray dog in the fields with his armalite.
In anticipation of this year’s QCinema, one can’t help but be curious about the rather unfamiliar presence of Bor Ocampo in the lineup. Perhaps this is more on me, but I don’t think any regular moviegoer active in the post-pandemic film festival scene would recognize his name unless they had also been around during the lively days of the Cinema One Originals festival.
To this end, I dug into the annals of iWantTFC’s library, which, as of this writing, houses most of the currently dormant festival’s archive, to try and make sense of what Bor Ocampo may soon offer in his next outing, Moneyslapper. Suffice it to say, he has a promising style when it comes to illustrating the corruption in the Philippine countryside, specifically Pampanga.
Dayang Asu is a 2015 action thriller that opens with a radio broadcast about the then-disputed Marcos burial. Two truck drivers briefly comment on the issue before greeting a passing car with three goons and handing over some unidentified contraband. Within three minutes, Bor Ocampo shows you all you need to know about how he approaches this scenario — and, by extension, the film: a long, medium shot navigates around the three goons, two of whom spend the brief moment hunting a dog in the distance with an armalite, while the third takes a piss behind them.
It’s barely sensationalized — the camera is either far away or naively up close — and yet the grittiness doesn’t wane. For the rest of Dayang Asu, the film freely navigates around Pampanga, serving a slice of life that, for all intents and purposes, is damningly corrupt. The film focuses on Tonton, the son of business associate Peping, and Tonton’s aspirations to prove his mettle in the world of corruption. It weaves in stories such as the sleazy hijinks of Peping’s bodyguard Amor, Peping and Tonton’s family life, the modest life of Muslim store owner Ahmed, and many more.
Throughout the intersection of these stories, the film distinguishes itself from your typical corruption drama by employing medium shots and wide frames. When Tonton takes a trip to the local BIR to collect some receipts, the camera doesn’t shy away from taking us around the office and right into the cubicle of his insider. Even the most mundane things — like Ahmed’s prayer at the mosque, setting up his ukay-ukay store, the casual passing of dump trucks to a quarry site, and the lead-up to a mayor’s assassination attempt — are given a lot of build-up. Dayang Asu builds a system of corruption not by focusing heavily on violence but by balancing it with the happenstance nature of Pampanga life.
Peping (Ricky Davao) and Tonton (Junjun Quintana) celebrate Tonton’s birthday at their guardhouse with two fellow associates.
This approach remarkably transforms what could seem like a dragging and disengaged form of storytelling into a style that leans on the thriller genre to a tee. The camera trails behind its subjects, around alleyways, and positions its cuts toward spaces that tease something disturbing. The camera often lingers in a scene even when it doesn’t seem necessary. Notably, it frames Pampanga in a far more subdued hostility, borrowing methods from Lav Diaz and Brillante Mendoza to portray the casual yet dark aspects of the province in a distant, disturbing manner.
Much can be said about how debatably dry this film is and how it chooses to throw the audience into a scene long before any action takes place. Yet this makes Bor Ocampo a remarkably interesting director in the way he draws tension from the film. He navigates tension in an acquired-taste manner, mixing in spurts of dark humor and treating gore and sex as just another natural turn of events. It’s worth noting how deceptively brutal this film is just by implication: dogs are seen being sold and carted off to a makeshift chophouse, prostitutes are shopped around, women are kidnapped and assaulted as prisoners, and authorities are assassinated. It’s the perfect balance to the film’s drier sections. The dryness of Dayang Asu is deceptive — and impressive, to boot.
The quiet brutality of Dayang Asu suitably pays off in the film’s finale. It effectively writes in an overall consequence of living within a corrupt system, as embodied by Tonton’s fate. In one fell swoop, the film ties together its political sentiments and character arcs with a swift, interesting mark. Pampanga’s corruption continues, and people’s willful participation in it leaves them both accessories and victims to its perpetuation.
In satiating my curiosity about Bor Ocampo through Dayang Asu, I’ve found a filmmaker who playfully mixes social realities with a comical and gruesome take. It’s the type of film that validates any excitement for Moneyslapper.
Dayang Asu was screened as part of the 2015 Cinema One Originals lineup. As of this writing, it is currently accessible for viewing via iWantTFC. Bor Ocampo’s Moneyslapper will be making its worldwide debut for the 2024 edition of QCinema Film Festival.
