MNL 143

I'm not sure who would get the most from this picture. It's a strangely scripted film and almost entirely lacking in meaningful story.

We follow a mini-van taxi driver (Allan Paule) in Manila. He's got an interesting, expressive face. He exchanges jovial, likable chit-chat with other taxi drivers. We take on board many strange passengers: a foulmouthed devout Catholic lady; a chef who, on seeing a bare piece of scrotum poking out from another passenger's shorts, takes a picture on his camera phone, and uploads it to the internet. Dopey film students making their first masterpiece, three gay-as-a-maypole Filipino queens. It's a thin and sketchy experience.

MNL143 is attractively photographed, in spite of spending about 80% of its runtime within the confines of the cab, using wide-angle fishbowl lenses. It has a very astutely captured sense of time and place. I became bored with its plotless, often meaningless existence.