More than any other film that comes to mind, Rafael Manuel’s “Filipiñana” taps into something that I’ve always found inherently sinister about golf courses: Sprawling gardens of solipsism that invite players to compete against themselves (and offer masters of the universe an ideal environment to affirm their status as they broker deals with each other between holes), they’re so elegantly imposed upon the land that it’s easy to forget that something else was ever there in the first place. The process evokes an uncanny kind of double terraformation — 150 acres of earth mulched into a more peaceful and better-manicured version of itself where people can forget how weird it is to see random sandpits and perfect circles of grass. Obliviating the past is always a happy byproduct of gentrification, but with golf courses that always seems to be a more deliberate part of the agenda. It’s no wonder Americans love them so much, or that we’ve left them behind as a parting gift for some of the countries we’ve colonized. Not “here’s something to remember us by” so much as “here’s something to help you forget what it was like before we got there.” I don’t know how many golf courses there were in the Philippines when America relinquished control over it in 1946, but today there are between 30 and 40 in the vicinity of Manila alone. One of them, the Luisita Golf Course and Country Club, was built over a former sugar plantation where 14 striking workers were massacred in 2004. Manuel is vague about the history of the fictional Alabang Country Club where his languidly unnerving “Filipiñana” takes place (though the backstory of club president Dr. Palanca does eventually snap into focus), but the director shoots the place with a Haneke-like remove that makes every member, caddie, and Chinese tourist feel like they’re conspiring to bury an awful secret of some kind. ~this review continues on IndieWire~
