Fable of the Fish
(Isda)

Reaching their fifties, Miguel and Lina left their province to move into a
slum near Manila. Still hoping to become pregnant, Lina has her grant
fulfilled. However, during a night of floods, her offspring is not quite
what she expected… Adolfo Alix Jr. filmed this “garbage suburbia”
with an amazing sense of framing. He shows a huge dumping ground
where thousands of inhabitants keep searching for whatever can be
recycled. Filipino cinema has lately produced other films set in such
a frightening society. For example, in Serbis, Brillante Mendoza gave
life to the organic network of lanes around an almost ruined porn film
theatre, where the nurse of John John also lives, where the run-down
houses in Lola may be flooded any minute. (Cherry Pie Picache, as Lina,
was the female protagonist in John John, and Anita Linda, the slum’s
midwife, was Lola.) What makes The Fable of the Fish so powerful is
that it first indulges in miserable realism (the couple saves money to
buy themselves a mosquito net), and then follows a different, almost
magic, trend of realism, greatly inspired by Filipino Christianity. This is
an unprecedented mixture, with a touch of nonsensical humour. CG