Tidbits from Mr. Lito Zulueta:
Because they are comedies, Onna Valera’s “My Fake American Accent” and Jay Abello’s “Namets” obscure their experimental nature. Entertaining at best, the movies show commendable attempts at humor and even satire.
Valera’s movie shows several intersecting lives in a technical assistance call center. The characters struggle amid merciless late-night shifts and office politics. Always sporting the fake American accent that is their ticket to higher-paying employment, they assess and reassess their identities, attempting with mixed results to rid their world of the fakery and virtual reality that have become their second nature.
“Namets” is a romantic comedy that tries to improve the genre by its loving take on Negros Occidental cuisine. Because of the love story, the movie threatens to be as saccharine as Bacolod piyaya. But it has a certain innovative quality about it, especially in its use of entertaining vignettes about food that are interspersed with the narrative (the film is written by award-winning novelist Vicente Groyon), including the Stanley Kubrick-like opening sequence about prehistoric Negros cave men accidentally discovering fire and inasal. The funniest vignette involves a father being stopped from slaughtering and cooking the household pet chicken, goat and dog by his animal-loving son, a tearjerker, if there was one.
