- Story of George Bustamante (Joem Bascon) a Filipino engineer in Japan who suddenly finds himself unemployed. He either goes home, just breaking even on the amount he spent getting to and securing a job in Japan, or he will look for another gig, whatever that might be.
- After a few unpromising interviews, shown in a dialogue less montage, his friend Roger (Jun Sabayton) suggests he work as a stuntman in kids television show. This was done using an overtly homoerotic bantering of Roger when he realized that George has a great physique
- Fish out of the water scenarios as George and Roger work in the set of the textbook example of a tokusatsu, Japanese live action superhero kid’s show. The level of demoralization brought by underemployement is partly relieved when George finds out that his son back home watches the show, and incidentally the character he doubles is his favourite, Blue Force.
- The film is part of the trend of making light the experience of migrant labor, quirky instead of lachrymose. A formal decision often brought by the seeming bankruptcy of melodrama, a default mode not just in OFW stories, but in the Philippine film canon in general.
- A connection can be made to Kita Kita (Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, 2017), also set in Japan, which completely disregarded the labor dimension of Filipino presence aboard. By focusing on romance, Japan became a backdrop pushing the mimicry of first world settings and sensibilities to higher levels. There is a long list of films, both indie and mainstream, who follows this logic, directly or indirectly.
- Blue Bustamante, still has OFW motifs; employment hardships, loneliness expressed in letter writing back home, dealing with family separation (interestingly the strain on the father-child relationship in emphasized more than of between spouses, in this case labor migration is still largely an experience of the family unit), although done in a nostalgic tone.
- As an added subplot, George meets a Japanese woman, Ayumi (Mari Koduka). After a few meet cute encounters, they have dinner together. George shares his anxieties, Ayumi shares her desires for him. There is very little comprehension between the two. It is later revealed that Ayumi stalks him and withholds his mail, several of which are letters of job acceptance. He can leave his stuntman gig.
- In the TV show, the character he doubles for will also be killed off. Everything works out, but George worries on the affect on his son. In his final scene, he goes off script and does an ad lib blaze of glory fight scene. The director and other actors played along. The producers were furious. He still gets killed off.
- When migrant workers were coming in, or being trafficked, as entertainers to Japan in huge numbers in the 90s, japayukis were very prominent in the popular imagination. Somehow this hasn’t been explored in cinema comprehensively, to my knowledge. [A quick search showed Maricris Sioson: Japayuki (Joey Romero, 1993). Scripted by Lualhati Bautista, I think I need to hunt this movie down]
- The usual figures of the pasyon-like narratives of women abroad is embodied in the nurse, domestic helper or caregiver. Signifiers of suffering by the self, mother, and nation, epitomized by likes of Flor Contemplacion. Flor’s death ushered a national and international scandal, germinated a migrant workers movement, and resulted in several cinematic recreations. The films are The Flor Contemplation Story (Joel Lamangan, 1995), Victim No. 1: Delia Maga [Jesus, Pray for Us! : A Massacre In Singapore] (Carlos J. Caparas, 1995), and Bagong Bayani (Tikoy Aguiluz, 1995) [See Guillermo 2000]
- After making preparations for a job fit for him, in the end he reveals he took another stuntman gig, a lead this time, hoping his son will love it as much as Blue Force.
- There is something very disturbing about nostalgic and quirky narratives when you hears news about a maid’s body found in a freezer in Kuwait or when Mary Jane Veloso is still in death-row in Indonesia. These are just the more publicized ones.
- This gentrification of migrant narratives, I believe, is not new. We can trace this to works by the likes of Jose Garcia Villa and Beinvenido Santos, in very different terms, or made different once these writers and their life and works were canonized in the national literary canon. If we are looking for a Carlos Bulosan of Filipinos in Japan in film, Lawrence Fajardo’s Imbisibol (2015) comes to mind.
- While underemphasizing the experience of labor export, Blue Bustamante provides an alternative moment of redemption through finding meaning in a job not fit for him. This seems, at first glance, subjective conservatism, but migrant stories rarely have definite resolutions. A few follow these lines, but most resort to the homecoming trope, which are equally ambivalent and uncertain. This is because it is difficult to frame OFW experiences in a wider logic of labor export by the Philippine state, and global flow of goods, including warm bodies, of neoliberalism in film. [See Rodriguez 2010]
- The homecoming as resolution could be found in a wide array of films over the years. Off the top of my head; ‘Merika (Gil Portes, 1984), Sana Maulit Muli (Olivia Lamasan, 1995), Dubai (Rory Quintos, 2005), Emir (Chito Roño, 2010), Never Not Love You (Antoinette Jadaone, 2018). This formal move, posed as a safe nationalist conclusion, has been criticized as well. [See Vera 2011 and Capino 2010]
- Interestingly, two Singaporean films about Filipina domestic helpers also use this device; The Maid (Kelvin Tong, 2005) and Ilo Ilo (Anthony Chen, 2013). [Delia Aguilar’s pointed review of Ilo ilo here.]
- George playing behind the costume of a Japanese superhero, a good example of Japan’s cultural imperialism with an indirect aim of erasing its war crimes in the region (see Tolentino 2016), appears ironic and campy to some, or feel-good to some, is an opportunity to lay bare the social contradictions that appear, but most especially not shown in Blue Bustamante. The present historical moment, demands rigid interrogation of form on how to narrate the lives of those in the margin of nations.
- Blue Bustamante is available in full online, highly recommended.
Suggested Reading:
Alice G. Guillermo’s “The Filipina OCW In Extremis” in Geopolitics of the Visible: Essays on Philippine Film Cultures (ed. Rolando B. Tolentino). Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000. Unfortunately not included in this recently release selected works here.
Robyn Rodriguez here, discusing her book Migrants for Export.
Noel Vera’s review of Jose B. Capino’s book, which contains the chapter The Migrant Woman’s Tale: On Loving and Leaving Nations.
Rolando B. Tolentino’s “Hysteria: Japanese Children’s Television in the Philippines” (1997) and “Sovereignty: Japanese Animation and Filipina Comfort Women” (1998), in Keywords: Essays on Philippine Media Cultures and Neocolonialisms. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016
Jacob Laneria 