Qui­et defi­ance in JE Tiglao’s Metamorphosis

Peri­ods are nev­er easy, but when Adam expe­ri­ences his first peri­od, every­thing threat­ens to shift. Raised as a boy by his con­ser­v­a­tive par­ents, Adam (Gold Aze­ron) dis­cov­ers that he is inter­sex, putting into ques­tion far more than what is typ­i­cal of ado­les­cence and forc­ing him to con­front his own gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, and iden­ti­ty. His desires and curiosi­ties are fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed when his fam­i­ly, under reli­gious imper­a­tive with the sup­port of med­ical rec­om­men­da­tions, begins to impose deci­sions on his body, par­tic­u­lar­ly his gen­i­talia, break­ing open the sub­ject for pub­lic discussion.

What plays out in JE Tiglao’s Meta­mor­pho­sis is a com­ing-of-age rarely depict­ed onscreen, con­sid­ered a land­mark of inter­sex rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Philip­pine cin­e­ma. But days before it was set to pre­mière, the film was flagged by the country’s cen­sor­ship board with an X rat­ing, deemed ​“unsuit­able for pub­lic exhi­bi­tion” due to ​“pro­longed expo­sure of the pri­vate parts” and ​“a long scene that involves mas­tur­ba­tion,” even if such scenes had been approved dur­ing the festival’s screen­ing process.

Puber­ty is already a com­plex, over­long rite of pas­sage towards bod­i­ly own­er­ship for any teen. But Adam’s strug­gles are com­pound­ed by gen­i­tal dys­mor­phia and gen­der dys­pho­ria, espe­cial­ly as he begins to devel­op feel­ings for his much old­er class­mate Angel (Iana Bernardez) and Dr. Abra­ham (Ivan Padil­la). These inti­mate (and at times sex­u­al scenes), which Tiglao refused to edit out, are key to Metamorphosis’s objec­tive of demys­ti­fy­ing and lib­er­at­ing the inter­sex body.

Mid­way through the film, Adam decides to explore his body for the first time by mas­tur­bat­ing in front of the mir­ror. The cam­era most­ly focus­es on his face, intent on cap­tur­ing the pain and plea­sure of this pri­vate moment. While dis­qui­et­ing for audi­ences giv­en Adam’s ten­der age, the moment feels dis­tinct­ly lib­er­at­ing for the char­ac­ter, espe­cial­ly after the exter­nal pres­sures from his par­ents about what to do with his body are momen­tar­i­ly removed. In main­tain­ing the long take, Tiglao cre­ates an inter­rupt­ed dis­play of how Adam’s body is not as for­eign as he imag­ines; a reminder that the inter­sex body can be a source of joy and possibility.

This mes­sage is crys­tallised In the final moments of the film, as Tiglao shows Adam splayed on top of a rock, nude and sun-soaked, while a voiceover recounts a myth recit­ed at the begin­ning. While it is easy to read the image as fur­ther fetishis­ing the inter­sex body, one can­not help but rev­el at how Meta­mor­pho­sis also exam­ines how Adam’s rela­tion­ship with his body has evolved. What­ev­er gen­i­tal dys­pho­ria he strug­gles with at the begin­ning is replaced by unabashed accep­tance of his body, of him­self. The open­ness of Adam’s body lan­guage sig­ni­fies a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that has been devel­oped; a new way of nav­i­gat­ing the world through the body one inhabits.

In rage and help­less­ness, Tiglao took to Twit­ter to express his dis­ap­point­ment at the deci­sion, which sparked a social media storm through the hash­tag #Laban­Meta. The fol­low­ing day, the board reached out to Tiglao for a sec­ond review and replaced its X rat­ing with an R‑16 rat­ing, enabling the team to release the film with­out any cuts.

The X rat­ing ini­tial­ly giv­en to Meta­mor­pho­sis by the Movie and Tele­vi­sion Review and Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Board (MTR­CB) takes the nudi­ty and sex­u­al instances out of con­text and while this is unfair, it is unsur­pris­ing. Since its cre­ation dur­ing the era of for­mer dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos Sr., the board has had a ques­tion­able role in shap­ing cin­e­ma with­in the coun­try. In Vol­ume 5 of Peliku­la Jour­nal, media advo­cate Sarah Isabelle Tor­res has writ­ten about how the cen­sor­ship bod­ies in the coun­try ​“judge and han­dle films unjust­ly”, with local film­mak­ers sink­ing a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their bud­gets in the review process, ulti­mate­ly dis­cour­ag­ing films from the regions from being screened in more theatres.

But more impor­tant­ly, arbi­trary and con­ser­v­a­tive def­i­n­i­tions of what is cen­sorable have cre­at­ed a his­tor­i­cal­ly fraught rela­tion­ship with sex and sex­u­al­i­ty in Philip­pine cin­e­ma. Even Steven Speilberg’s his­tor­i­cal dra­ma Schindler’s List was cen­sored by the board not for its por­tray­al of the hor­rors of the Holo­caust, but for brief sex scenes ​“involv­ing dou­ble breast expo­sure of women.” But what emerges in recent years is par­tic­u­lar bias against the work that depicts the lives of the LGBTQIA+ community.

As point­ed out by Unreel PH, Petersen Var­gas’ queer com­ing-of-age sto­ry 2 Cool 2 Be 4gotten received an R‑18 rat­ing while ultra­vi­o­lent films such as Logan only receive an R‑16 rat­ing, and many local com­mer­cial films rife with infi­deli­ty and raunchy sex scenes can be viewed under R‑13 ratings.

The cen­sor­ship of Meta­mor­pho­sis mir­rors the con­flicts with­in the film sur­round­ing Adam’s body – one that refus­es to be altered by out­siders; a spir­it that refus­es to be alien­at­ed. Its exis­tence in its full form is a qui­et defi­ance of out­dat­ed het­ero­nor­ma­tive sys­tems and a reminder that com­mu­ni­ties can rise against them.

Meta­mor­pho­sis plays at BFI South­bank on May 29 as part of Queer East, which runs 18 – 29 May in cin­e­mas across London.