Don’t be fooled! This poster ‘reads’ as Animation, but NINTENDO is a Live Action coming-of-age film, and a good one. Comfortingly conventional/true to the form, yet holding on to enough curious local custom & cultural specificity in time & place (1990s/Philippines) to make it feel freshly caught.* Best guess is that writer/producer Valerie Castillo Martinez used her own memories of growing up in Manila for details, well caught by director Raya Martin. A middle-school summer break; the matriarchal society in charge at home (not a father in sight); some wary mixing between the boy groups and the girl groups. Our focus on three buds and a neighboring girl who’d rather hang out with these computer game obsessed guys than those pink-fetishing girly girls. The boys’ passion for the latest Nintendo Cassette Game only exceeded only by a desire not so much to lose their virginity, but their foreskin under the whetstone sharped razor of an unsanctioned tradition-bound country circumciser. Yikes! The boys certain this rite of passage a sure way to increase size. As the youngest looking of the three pals, Noel Comia Jr. especially charming, a kid who doesn’t realize he’s become a handsome prince fit for the pretty new girl in town, but a much better fit for the smartest, Kim Chloie Oquendo as Mimaw, the boys' tagalong pal. All while earthquakes and power shortages make this a summer to remember. And doubly interesting to the viewer as a rare chance to see middle-class Filipino life.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Similarly gaining universality thru local specificity, FRENCH KISSES/’09, a coming-of-age film by ARAB OF THE FUTURE graphic novelist Riad Sattouf. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/03/les-beaux-gosses-french-kissers-2009.html
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