The Rapture of Fe

A review by Gary Deviles in yesterday’s issue of Philippine Daily Inquirer

MYTHS DEPICTING VIOlence against women and the glorification of men who perpetrate such violence abound. There are the classic Greek myths about Leda, Io, Europa, Cassandra, Philomela, and Kainis, all raped by gods and kings.

Some say these myths are indication of the triumph of patriarchy against matriarchy in early societies, and others say these are oftentimes symbolic resolutions of unresolved conflicts.

In Vim Yapan’s “Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe” (The Rapture of Fe), which won the Special Jury Prize winner in the recent 5th Cinemalaya Film Festival, myth becomes our collective trauma and fantasy as the film narrative weaves our past and present, personal victimization and political consciousness.

The story is about Fe, an overseas Filipino worker who has been retrenched as a consequence of an ailing global economy. At the onset we are already confronting the classic anxiety against the contradiction of market economy, as OFWs, in particular female OFWs, become the ultimate objects of our collective desire for mobilization and transnational fantasy of modernization and development.

Hence, the rape of Fe is the violence committed by bureaucratic inadequacy and corruption, and the injustice intrinsic ultimately in a global market economy.

Like all cases of rape, a victim suffers not once but in sustained and recurring instances. Here, Fe is also a battered wife, as her husband Dante beats her up on mere suspicion of having an illicit affair with her previous boyfriend Arturo. The story, therefore, attempts to weave the political with the personal, the allegorical rape with domestic violence.

But the story diverges from the usual allegory since the film also entwines the magical and supernatural, as one of Fe’s lovers in the end is a kapre, a local mythological creature who abducts women. This part is the crux of the film’s narrative.

Viewers tend to pathologize Fe since victims of domestic violence can become psychotic, and thus the kapre apparition can only be understood as one of her hallucinations. Such understanding of the film is a dead giveaway.

More than myth

However, myth is more than a good familiar story.

Thus, the film is not just an allegorical narrative, but also our disavowal of myths in general, our inability to accept other realities, and our refusal of the supernatural and otherworldly.

We condemn Fe mercilessly as we would revile our pre-colonial past, such that Fe’s world has nothing to do with us, irreconcilable with our so-called modern sense. We want to believe we are rational and have banished all forms of superstitions and folk beliefs.

In truth, our experience of modernization through urbanization and global economy has always been one of incongruity, in which the mysterious and the absurd exist along with our coherent experiences.

Ultimately, myths can be the last refuge of women, victims and the marginalized like Fe. This is the reason that “Panggagahasa” is not translated as the “Rape of Fe” but rather as the “Rapture of Fe,” since rapture connotes the ripening of myth itself, as it spreads and fulfills various degrees of usage, historical, collective or otherwise.

“Panggagahasa Kay Fe” will compete in Cairo Film Festival on Nov. 10-20, and be exhibited at Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival in New Delhi, Bahamas International Film Festival, and Chicago Film Festival in December.