A jarring, thoughtful transposition
(N.B.: Please don't read the review if you haven't watched the film yet.)
At first glance, Lance Katigbak’s “Fine Dining” has the shock appeal of poverty porn. The first time I saw it, I squirmed in embarrassment. I was unduly disturbed because it's too close to home this side of poverty. From the opening scenes alone, it was clear that it was a situation I didn’t want to witness, a story I’d rather deny – unattractive poor people and their life in the squatter shanty, particularly what they eat and how they eat it. As I watched on, I developed some kind of resentment. “I know these things are real, they do happen, but that doesn’t mean I have to watch.”
But the dark middle-aged everyday Filipino man on the YouTube screen seems to promise to do something interesting, with his methodical preparation of a pitiful meal of high-sodium instant noodles, and precooked turo-turo/carinderia (Filipino cafeteria) viands wrapped in transparent plastic. Still, I thought, “Do I have to be made to feel guilty too at the sight of a family so poor it can only afford fastfood plastic utensils on the dining table?” I know these things are real, but now what?
But Katigbak drew me in with what happens next. The man, a father and maybe a househusband or a widower, begins to prepare the food in a manner that is familiar only to those who can afford high-end eateries, the ones serviced by well-dressed waiters, with fine porcelain, real fresh flowers on the checkered table, and custom-designed interiors. This man must at least be a hand (a busboy? dishwasher?) in such a restaurant to be able to gain that knowledge (dribbled sauce, food architecture, etc. -- plating and presentation!) from his humble station, enough to be able to replicate the fanciness of it all in his dreary poor-man’s fare at home.
I’m no Marxist, but I began, at this point, to interpret the ensuing scenes through a reflexive class-divide prism. These uneasy, disparate things indeed go together right outside my village gate, almost side by side or cheek by jowl, as though to feed on each other, as though to illustrate the words irony, paradox, or anachronism. Then I suddenly wandered into reverie territory. My mind brought me anew to that episode in my life as a part-time magazine travel writer, fresh from covering (you know, food sampling, photoshoot, and interviews) Cafe Adriatico and other restaurants in Malate, Manila. As I walked my way home tossing up in my mind which technical food terms to use later in my article, I almost tripped over a man who was cooking something awful by the roadside. He looked old and wiry and, together with a little shabbily dressed boy, was busy setting fire on collected driftwood on the bare ground, using three large stones as stove. He then brought out a dirt-laden aluminium pan on which to fry some pork chops perhaps. The scene so depressed me I wonder how I made it home.
Before disinterest and further digressions set in, Katigbak snapped me back to the film. He apparently had something more up his sleeves. The man on the short now appears to be cooking on a special occasion for a special someone. It’s his daughter’s birthday! The young girl soon appears from the screen, as though from school and feasts on the food, making do with what’s on the table, the usual things presented in an unusual way.
It is at this point that the film redeems itself from the ghastliness of a documentary or a poverty porn film that says this is how things are, period, or this is how things are always going to be.
Katigbak refuses to paint what appears to me to be a victim of social injustice (for I can’t honestly believe he is a ‘victim’ of his own laziness) as a pathetic and pitiful entity, perhaps living out his and his forebears’ ‘karma.’ He is not a victim, but a man with a name, with innate dignity, trying to live the present moment to the fullest possible, perhaps even going against all odds, by going against the grain of one’s station, of what “being poor” should be.
Katigbak, an 18-year old University of the Philippines-Diliman Broadcast Communication student with his upper-middle-class sensibilities and membership in a youth group with a Catholic charismatic background (Youth for Christ, to be exact), is trying to limn the otherwise squirmworthy subject with the eyes of his faith. “Fine Dining” is looking at economic affliction on a spiritual, mystical, and nonjudgmental level. The overall result is a non-naive freshness of idea, a pleasant surprise from the non-jadedness of youth on the verge of socially aware manhood.
Katigbak’s bravery in taking up his subject at all in “Fine Dining’s” is only matched by his success in inviting this viewer to sample what he doesn’t want to have for dinner (cheap homecooked food in nonbiodegradable plastics!, oozing ugliness and decrepitude as interior design!) and staying long enough for his just dessert: a jarring transposition of the lowest troughs and highest peaks of life in this surreal First World-Third World town.
(N.B.: Please don't read the review if you haven't watched the film yet.)
At first glance, Lance Katigbak’s “Fine Dining” has the shock appeal of poverty porn. The first time I saw it, I squirmed in embarrassment. I was unduly disturbed because it's too close to home this side of poverty. From the opening scenes alone, it was clear that it was a situation I didn’t want to witness, a story I’d rather deny – unattractive poor people and their life in the squatter shanty, particularly what they eat and how they eat it. As I watched on, I developed some kind of resentment. “I know these things are real, they do happen, but that doesn’t mean I have to watch.”
But the dark middle-aged everyday Filipino man on the YouTube screen seems to promise to do something interesting, with his methodical preparation of a pitiful meal of high-sodium instant noodles, and precooked turo-turo/carinderia (Filipino cafeteria) viands wrapped in transparent plastic. Still, I thought, “Do I have to be made to feel guilty too at the sight of a family so poor it can only afford fastfood plastic utensils on the dining table?” I know these things are real, but now what?
But Katigbak drew me in with what happens next. The man, a father and maybe a househusband or a widower, begins to prepare the food in a manner that is familiar only to those who can afford high-end eateries, the ones serviced by well-dressed waiters, with fine porcelain, real fresh flowers on the checkered table, and custom-designed interiors. This man must at least be a hand (a busboy? dishwasher?) in such a restaurant to be able to gain that knowledge (dribbled sauce, food architecture, etc. -- plating and presentation!) from his humble station, enough to be able to replicate the fanciness of it all in his dreary poor-man’s fare at home.
I’m no Marxist, but I began, at this point, to interpret the ensuing scenes through a reflexive class-divide prism. These uneasy, disparate things indeed go together right outside my village gate, almost side by side or cheek by jowl, as though to feed on each other, as though to illustrate the words irony, paradox, or anachronism. Then I suddenly wandered into reverie territory. My mind brought me anew to that episode in my life as a part-time magazine travel writer, fresh from covering (you know, food sampling, photoshoot, and interviews) Cafe Adriatico and other restaurants in Malate, Manila. As I walked my way home tossing up in my mind which technical food terms to use later in my article, I almost tripped over a man who was cooking something awful by the roadside. He looked old and wiry and, together with a little shabbily dressed boy, was busy setting fire on collected driftwood on the bare ground, using three large stones as stove. He then brought out a dirt-laden aluminium pan on which to fry some pork chops perhaps. The scene so depressed me I wonder how I made it home.
Before disinterest and further digressions set in, Katigbak snapped me back to the film. He apparently had something more up his sleeves. The man on the short now appears to be cooking on a special occasion for a special someone. It’s his daughter’s birthday! The young girl soon appears from the screen, as though from school and feasts on the food, making do with what’s on the table, the usual things presented in an unusual way.
It is at this point that the film redeems itself from the ghastliness of a documentary or a poverty porn film that says this is how things are, period, or this is how things are always going to be.
Katigbak refuses to paint what appears to me to be a victim of social injustice (for I can’t honestly believe he is a ‘victim’ of his own laziness) as a pathetic and pitiful entity, perhaps living out his and his forebears’ ‘karma.’ He is not a victim, but a man with a name, with innate dignity, trying to live the present moment to the fullest possible, perhaps even going against all odds, by going against the grain of one’s station, of what “being poor” should be.
Katigbak, an 18-year old University of the Philippines-Diliman Broadcast Communication student with his upper-middle-class sensibilities and membership in a youth group with a Catholic charismatic background (Youth for Christ, to be exact), is trying to limn the otherwise squirmworthy subject with the eyes of his faith. “Fine Dining” is looking at economic affliction on a spiritual, mystical, and nonjudgmental level. The overall result is a non-naive freshness of idea, a pleasant surprise from the non-jadedness of youth on the verge of socially aware manhood.
Katigbak’s bravery in taking up his subject at all in “Fine Dining’s” is only matched by his success in inviting this viewer to sample what he doesn’t want to have for dinner (cheap homecooked food in nonbiodegradable plastics!, oozing ugliness and decrepitude as interior design!) and staying long enough for his just dessert: a jarring transposition of the lowest troughs and highest peaks of life in this surreal First World-Third World town.
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