Beautiful human drama filled with warmth and humour in the midst of tragedy.
Jaya is a school teacher. Jaya was not meant to be a school teacher, Jaya was destined to be a star! They’re a singer, an entertainer, a comedian. They had finally managed to get their own tv show and then . . . Typhoon Yolanda hit. The studio flooded, and their career ended.
That was the past, this is now.
Jaya is hilarious, playing a version of their real life self, going into class hungover, getting more hysterical than the kids if there’s a storm drill, and grumbling about being on their last nerve with the weans. They kick at the confines of what wasn’t the life they wanted for themself. It doesn’t help that it’s a lot of work for little pay and their boss is a dick.
Luckily Jaya has Cyrus. He’s the idiot who spills his breakfast all over the homework they’re marking, and whose farts wake them up. He’s the love of their life.
Across town is Arnel. He’s a kid in their class, who passes more or less unnoticed. He’s basically being raised by the tv. The anniversary of his mother’s death is coming up, and his aunties want to mark it. They ask him to chip in for food and stuff, so he needs to go to Sicogon, the next island over, to get money off his dad.
Jaya finally has a bust-up with their boss and quits. They declare their intention to take part in the Ms Gay Sicogon queer pageant being held at the island’s fancy tourist resort, prove that they still got it! Cyrus and Jaya fight, he is long past the point of wanting to be settled down, and Jaya’s attempt to reclaim their youth by partying and walking out of a paying job might be a dealbreaker for their relationship. Determined to show him, Jaya packs their gladrags and storms out.
Thus begins the road trip movie that is Asog. Jaya and Arnel are thrown together on this journey over to the next island, bumping into people and hearing their stories. Everyone’s life’s been changed by Typhoon Yolanda, everyone has been touched in some way. Whether it’s the couple who give them a ride, who lost half the coconut trees they harvest, or the little girl who tries to sell them sunglasses, who has to walk to the next village twice a day to collect water because the well in her place was compromised. Finally on Sicogon they meet the indigenous people whose land was snatched up to build the fancy tourist resort. In the aftermath of the typhoon, while they were homeless, starving, and struggling to bury their dead, they were asked to sign away the rights to their land in return for food aid. Over 800 resisted, and still resist to this day, many living in makeshift homes, while through chain-link fences, they watch Westerners come to swim in the infinity pools.
The journey puts Jaya in touch with what really matters in life, and encourages Arnel to start really living it again. Had a tear in my eye by the end, genuinely moving.