Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Iván Massagué’s Goreng awakens in a prison quite unlike any other. Well, a Vertical Self-Management Center, to be pedantic. His cellmate, or perhaps floormate, is Zorion Eguileor’s Trimagasi, a curious older gentleman who informs him that they are on level 48, a decent enough level, and they shouldn’t go too hungry or have to resort to cannibalism just yet.
You see, the food in this hole comes down from level zero, where an extraordinary feast is prepared for the higher levelled inmates to gorge on, for a few minutes at least, then the platform is lowered to the next level. All the way down to… Who know how far? Hundreds, at least, although by that point, of course, there’s no food left.
Troubles arise when, on the monthly shuffling of the inmates positions, Goreng and Trimagasi awake on level 171, which, it turns out, is more or less the level where resorting to cannibalism seems like a solid option. Thankfully Goreng is saved by a deus ex crazy lady, as Alexandra Masangkay’s Miharu re-appears, a women travelling down on the platform in search of her daughter.
There’s another couple of vignettes as Goreng awakens on level 33 with Antonia San Juan’s Imoguiri, who’s trying to convince people to ration their food to allow everyone to survive, and then later with Emilio Buale Coka’s Baharat with whom he and Goreng try to get a message to the Administrators of the facility that… well, it’s something about a panna cotta. Probably meant as a metaphor.
Of course, in terms of the structure so dominant in the movie the message is a fair bit clearer, as this isn’t a film that’s making its political points particularly subtly. Where it falls apart a little as an allegory is the text of it – there’s not much in the way of remotely plausible, feasible or satisfying answers to the how, what, where, and why of this prison, and it seems all to eager to plaster over these gaps with buckets of blood.
However, for the strong of stomach, there’s an entertaining movie to be found here, told with the same sort of impressive low-budget minimalism of something like the setup of Cube, with the politics of Snowpiercer. It’s by not without its flaws – there’s a lot of plot threads thrown out that don’t really weave together into anything ultimately meaningful. It’s probably a film that’s better described as “interesting” than “good”, but I think that’s enough to recommend it as a curio.