Every now and then you are faced with an unconventional film that leaves you speechless at the end. Emerson Reyes’ “Dormitoryo” has that same effect.
The ensemble film plays out one rainy evening in a dorm where the varied occupants are at some pivotal point in their lives. The movie jumps from one room to the next, exploring their lives from the most mundane to the most desperate. The stories are uneven, creating a tension in mood and atmosphere from comical to the dramatic, funny to melancholy.
It’s a juggling act that Reyes manages to handle with some difficulty but succeeds, overall, to reach its surprising hard-hitting finale. While each story is contained, the more aware characters take time to listen in on the other rooms and the connections between their stories start to become clear.
There’s the engineering student, Charles, who has artistic inclinations and is as horny as any teenager with a room to himself. In the room next to him is the art student Max and his girlfriend Sheen, who bounce from playfully teasing each other to really pushing each other’s buttons.
There’s Jenny and Alex, lovers who are keeping their live-in status away from Jenny’s mother. There’s the businessman Steven and his lover Ramon, a cop. And rounding up the occupants is the landlady Aling Linda, who is a widow and whose daughter and grandchildren are in another country.
“Dormitoryo” becomes a sort of allegory on the cramped spaces of the city, how these lives are so contained in their personal spaces but everyone is privy to them due to the proximity and how they all eventually collide.
What makes “Dormitoryo” so unconventional and so demanding of its audience is its naturalism.
All the acting is understated. The first half of the film, there’s almost no plot. The story moves aimlessly, presenting itself as just a peek into a rainy night in the lives of the occupants of a dorm. The lack of a tangible story can be frustrating for some viewers as the naturalistic style suits some actors better than the others.
In the ensemble, Wowie De Guzman (who plays Steven), Ces Quesada (who plays Aling Linda), and Kate Alejandrino (who plays Jenny) shine and portray fully lived-in characters. There is a life, and there is meaning in their silences.
The others don’t fare as well that when the scene draws out and nothing is happening, we start looking for more.
Regardless of its weaker moments, the film is so daring and achieves an unexpected and powerful ending that Reyes succeeds in giving us a film worth seeing. If you can be patient and let the story take its time to build, you will leave with your jaw wide open and lots to think about on your way home from the cinema.
