‘Pushcart Tales’ REVIEW: Sigrid’s Best
‘Pushcart Tales’ REVIEW: Sigrid’s Best
The main cast form a circle in the center of a supermarket aisle. (L-R: Carlos Siguion-Reyna, Elora Españo, Nonie Buencamino, Shamaine Buencamino, Harvey Bautista, Therese Malvar.) Taken from the Official Trailer on YouTube.
In Sigrid Bernardo’s cinema, there lives characters defined by varying expressions of longing, loss, or anxiety. Since her feature-length debut in Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita, the director has never stopped at conveying stories that are a lot less pedestrian in thought. The key ingredient in all her films is that there is something decidedly quirky about the life her characters breathe. Take the forlorn loneliness of Lorna; the controversial Kita-Kita; or the psychologically unnerving UnTrue. Sigrid will always find a quirk in her story to work from.
So her characters become trapped in a grocery store.
In doing so, the aptly-titled Pushcart Tales gives its audience a very simple plot. Three grocery staff, a shoplifting rich kid, a lost old man, and a stranded young mother wind up in a supermarket in the middle of a raging storm. It is the scenario which sets the stage for a dialogue-heavy examination that sees an ensemble cast of the Buencaminos, Carlos Siguion-Reyna, Elora Españo, Therese Malvar, and Harvey Bautista play off of each other in service of revealing the stories that define each of their lives as grocery regulars.
Two pushcarts wrestle each other out as a typhoon rages outside. Taken from the Official Trailer on YouTube.
Such an unfortunate predicament proves to be the catalyst for a film defined by hilarity and great performances. Pushcart Tales is the type of film only possible in a film fest hosted by a supermarket chain, and it unexpectedly provides the conditions for what is Sigrid Bernardo’s best. Scene-stealing performances from everyone; ridiculous moments harkening back to her 2014 outing Lorna; a story paced so well in comparison to her previous works. (Reviewer’s note: It pains me to omit specific details here, but I will only leave the words fruit cocktail for the interested.) The film’s material is quite thin, but it substantially produces a story rich in form.
What really makes the film so interesting is that it's the type of film only made possible by the blessing of 100% creative control, a thing that comes with the festival’s participation on top of theme adherence and the bountiful access to plenty of product placement that just adds some more authenticity to the whole thing. If anything, its quick and fleeting production is a testament to Sigrid Bernardo’s nature as an auteur and a storyteller. A high point, to say the least.
You can catch Pushcart Tales in the inaugural CinePanalo Film Festival at Gateway Cinemas until March 26, 2024.
