2005 | 1hr 40m | Written by Michiko Yamamoto, Directed by Auraeus Solito
Date: Friday, December 9, 2022 | 7:30pm
Venue: NYU King Juan Carlos Center | 53 Washington Sq S, NYC 10012
Open to the public; proof of vaccination required
RSVP link: https://bit.ly/panawin2022
Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Maximo Oliveros lives in an accepting and affectionate home with his widowed father and two elder brothers. When he falls in love with a policeman who investigates his family’s illegal dealings, he finds himself torn between conflicting loyalties.
Notes on the Film
Made with a miniscule budget of $40,000 and shot in 13 days, Auraeus Solito’s debut feature The Flowering of Maximo Oliveros, with major participation by debuting producer Raymond Lee, is another remarkable example of the resourcefulness, grit, and imaginative élan of Philippine independent filmmakers. It caused a stir at its premiere at Cinemalaya, the Philippines’ major independent filmfest, where it won the Special Jury Prize and a Special Citation for debuting lead actor Nathan Lopez. It then went on to gain further awards and acclaim at the Berlin Int’l Film Festival, Sundance, and Rotterdam among many festival appearances. In New York, the MoMA and Film Society of Lincoln Center chose Maximo to open the annual New Directors/New Films exhibition.
Maximo Oliveros is a twelve-year-old boy who goes around cheerfully wearing girly clothes and participates in neighborhood pretend beauty contests. Warmly accepted and loved by his rough-mannered father Paco (the great character actor Soliman Cruz) and elder brothers (Neil Ryan Sese and Ping Medina), Maxi has taken the role of his departed mother in cooking for the family and cleaning and decorating the house. Denizens of the Manila slums where they live generally treat Maxi as a colorful and cheerful part of the scrappy ecosystem. Maxi’s father and brothers are engaged in petty crime for a living, all the while maintaining an understanding accommodation with the neighborhood police. Maxi’s world turns upside down when an idealistic neophyte cop (JR Valentin) saves him from an attack by a couple of thugs and becomes the object of the boy’s puppy love. (Nathan Lopez, who is heterosexual, got the role of Maxi by accident. He had merely accompanied a friend to an audition and got cast instead. He credits his sisters’ mentoring in nailing Maxi’s flamboyant personality.)
During its international festival run Maximo was seen as a groundbreaker in the way it dared to depict a queer child’s burgeoning sexuality. The film was often cited for its delicate yet unapologetic and refreshingly nonchalant depiction of gay sexuality. In a review, Slant magazine’s Keith Ulrich, praised the film for its “quietly revolutionary queer perspective,” and noted: “It is one of the great taboos, particularly in Western culture, to seriously consider the developing sexual feelings of children, a subject most easily infantilized, sensationalized, or brushed under the carpet, lest one become an unwitting Megan’s Law pariah. What’s often lost in this swirl of knee-jerk ‘adult’ protectiveness are the feelings of the child, which—raw though they may be—deserve to be included in the discussion rather than subsumed by argumentation.”
Maximo, for all the international buzz it generated, is only part of a vigorous tradition of depicting LGBTQ stories in Philippine cinema. A couple of streams can be traced in this tradition. The longer stream, reaching back to the early 1950s comedies of superstar Dolphy, feature gay and transgender characters in exaggerated, mocking, sometimes affectionate, parodies. Depictions have lately turned into celebratory and campy displays of gay wit and survival instincts. Notably, five of the top-ten grossing Philippine films of all time star Vice Ganda, a cross-dressing gay host and comedian, all of them produced within the last ten years.
Another stream treats its LGBTQ characters with greater depth and seriousness This can be traced back to the great Lino Brocka’s pioneering Tubog sa Ginto/Gold-Plated (1970) about a secretly homosexual man and his repressed wife. Since then, there has been a veritable cottage industry of films featuring LGBTQ stories. A list of outstanding works with strong LQBTQ characters and situations would include Brillante Mendoza’s Masahista/Masseur (Locarno Golden Leopard), Lav Diaz’s Ang Babaeng Humayo/The Woman Who Left (Venice Golden Lion), and key works by Jun Lana, Joselito Altarejos, and Adolfo Alix. Like Maximo, these films are often distinguished in how they expand their focus from the particularities of LGBTQ lives to wider issues and human dilemmas that concern society at large.
In the case of Maximo, the arrival of the kind, idealistic cop makes Maxi question the illegal way that his family survives. As the story progresses, Maxi’s gayness becomes only a small part of the exploration of justice, corruption, compassion, mercilessness, familial love, and self-determination. These universal human themes animating Maximohave also preoccupied a great number of films in the Philippine canon, whatever the gender identity of their characters, in a culture where independent cinema is not only a form of entertainment but also a means of moral and intellectual discourse.
— Gil Quito
Curator
Awards
- Gawad Urian: Best Picture, Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing; Dekada Award as one of the ten best films of the decade
- Cinemalaya: Special Jury Prize, Best Production Design, Actor Special Citation
- Golden Screen Awards: Best Performance by an Actor
- Star Awards: Best Movie, Director, New Actor
- Asian First Film Festival: Best Film
- Berlin International Film Festival: Best First Feature Film, Teddy Best Feature Film. Children’s Jury Special Mention
- Las Palmas Film Festival: Audience Choice Award, Best Actor
- Montreal World Film Festival: Best First Feature Film
- Rotterdam Int’l Film Festival: NETPAC Award
About the Screenwriter and the Director:
