Reading Harrison’s in the callroom with the goal of quoting the blasted book at the slightest provocation has been supplanted in the recent months by less annoying and more enjoyable activities, such as sleeping, watching movies, and licking latak Nutella off its jar. In terms of watching movies everyone’s taste has been slowly evolving: from the porn-ish Boxing Helena, a few days ago everyone watched the indie Selda. Of course the pretentious delineation between indie/art film and commercial film is highly arbitrary and exactly that–pretentious, but we will not go into that here as this is not a research paper.

Selda is the pinoy movie wherein Sid Lucero goes to prison and undergoes all sorts of prison life tribulations and ends up falling in love with his cell mate Emilio Garcia. To show us that Sid doesn’t really swing that way prior to his prison experience he is shown having too much sex with Ara Mina, but all these sexual issues are the least interesting stuff in the movie. What really concerns everyone:

Djana: Kadiri yung tae!!!
Tits: Bakit sila laging nagmumura?
Lovell: Nakakalungkot naman makulong.
Me: Di ko kayang kumain ng noodles kahalo ang kanin.
HIV: Grabe 2 and a half hours!

Because indeed, it is too bleeping long, with long, introspective scenes in the farm where nothing is happening, long close-up shots of things in the prison, long meandering meandering meandering about everything. Still, of all the movies shown in the callroom, this movie seemed to have the most lasting impression–next to Boxing Helena, of course.

“If you will be given a choice: get gang-raped by 3 prison guys or be banished to the tiny prison bartolina for one week where there is no light and you will crap and pee on the floor and be stuck with that week-old crap and pee for one week, what will you choose?” someone asked in the callroom.
“Bartolina,” Tits said with conviction.
“I might have to think about it very hard,” I said with conviction–I just have issues with crap.
“Bartolina,” JD-Lu said.

Quite annoyed at my seeming aloneness in being open to getting raped–if pushed against the wall, okay– I pushed further and qualified the situation:
“What if you can choose among the prisoners, so you can avoid those with boils and weird rash?” I asked JD-Lu.
“Bartolina!” JD-Lu insisted.
“But what if you will have nothing to eat in the bartolina for one week?” I added.
“Then I might have to think about it very hard as well,” JD-Lu finally said.

Gang-raped or bartolina? Discuss.

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