I got the chance to sit with the wonderful Jorrybell Agoto, the star of powerful, subdued and stylistically awe-inspiring Filipiñana. Filipiñana will be playing this year’s Sydney Film Festival, which runs from the 3rd to the 14th of June – Billy Newbery
Billy Newbery
This is your second time playing Isabel; you first played her in the short film version of Filipiñana. What was it like coming back to make a feature version of the same project years later?
Jorrybell Agoto
When we did Filipiñana, the short was only my second acting gig in film because I had started in theatre. It took us about five years after the short to do the feature. Five years is a lot of time to develop as an actor, especially in film. I actually wasn’t even sure if director Rafael Manuel would hire me again because I’m already in my 30’s and the character is meant to be 17, but he did. He also brought back most of the main crew and my co-actors; they were all the same from the short, which meant it wasn’t hard to adjust. When we did the short, he really focused on my acting, but this time on the feature, he already knew my stuff, so he would focus on other actors and other aspects of the film. He set a collaborative mode, giving me more freedom to play around with Isabel’s character, giving me even more freedom than I had on the short.
BN
When you say you were given more freedom, what did that freedom and collaboration look like on a project as incredibly specific and exact as this?
JA
What I love about working with director Manuel is that he really included me in pre-production. We had a lot of talks about my character, but when we were in the shooting, I just dropped all the preparations that I had. I would just listen to what he wanted me to do and just observe because the character, Isabel, is really passive. She acts as the eye of the audience in the world that Rafael Manuel created. We did a lot of rehearsals and a lot of talking. That’s where he really opened the table for me to say what I thought about the character Isabel. That’s where I raised questions I had, for example, I brought up my fear of making Isabel too monotonous because there’s nothing really active happening with her in the script. He would take notes of that and listen to whatever I had to say.
BN
There is this great inner life that you bring to Isabel that makes the audience lean forward to figure out what she’s thinking and feeling. How do you approach such an internal character?
JA
When we did the short, that was the first time that I’ve watched myself, and I couldn’t quite own my choices. One thing that helped; there were a lot of moments where I was beginning to become too emotional, especially in the difficult scenes. What kept me grounded was that when I created the character of Isabel in my mind, I saw her like the feeling of an afternoon in the Philippines. When it’s so scorching hot, and you want to take a siesta, that’s the main influence of my acting, it being too draining to put your emotions out there. Instead, all you want is just to lie in bed. I also learned from playing Isabel to drop all my preparation and just exist in that world of the film. I usually over prepare, so there is all this stuff going on in my head while in the scene. I’ve learned how to drop it before entering the set or the scene, so maybe that’ll help me in the future.
BN
There is a brilliant moment later in the film when Isabel is allowed to have a swell of emotions, and we cut away from her face, instead only hearing her voice. How did you approach that vital scene?
JA
We have a lot of languages here in the Philippines, Tagalog, which is the most commonly used in the film. The monologue, though, is in a different language; it’s in Ilocano, which I’m familiar with because I’m from Ilocos Norte. This is in the northern part of Ilocos. So when the director wrote this script, he wrote it in English, and I did all the Ilocano translation.
BN
Some of these scenes have such long pauses and such specific movements, were the movements figured out in rehearsal to be exact, or was it something that you just kind of tried a couple times in different takes?
JA
The bigger movements were from director Manuel, like the scene where I’m leading the blind. He showed me the movement within the frame. There was a lot of pre-production without me between the DOP and Director Manuel, where it got all figured out before the shoot. Director Manuel was very keen-eyed with the other actors’ blocking, but for me, I can’t seem to remember if there were blockings that he gave me because Isabel is not moving most of the time. He would just say you’re sitting here, and he let me play with all the micro blockings, head movement and things like that. I did all that on my own.
BN
In that leading the blind scene, there is such a wonderful long pause before you start moving. Are you just kind of feeling that out, or is director Manuel calling out to you off-screen?
JA
He would never call out during the scene but just correct me afterwards. He did not want me to think about it. He didn’t even want me to think about my continuity. In a day, we just shoot like two to three sequences, so there are lots of takes and a lot of time for us to be familiar with the blocking. Honestly, it was really helpful to navigate this kind of film. You get to learn blocking so well that it’s as if it becomes second nature, and it looks like it hasn’t been taught to you. It makes sense that he asked for a lot of takes because you catch a kind of rawness after a lot of takes.
BN
If you had that much time for takes, how long did the film take to shoot?
JA
It was a long shoot. If I’m not mistaken, two to three months of shooting. There was a lot of chopping my bangs in between shoot days to match the continuity.
BN
There is musicality to this film in its rhythm and in the movements of the background actors. How did this come about? Was it just through multiple takes, or did director Manuel play music on set?
JA
Director Manuel is musically inclined. I was also in awe when I watched it, because I didn’t even notice the musicality of it when we did the shoot.
BN
While you’re shooting, are you aware of how it’s going to come together?
JA
No, not all. When I read the script, Isabel is new to the golf course, which is the setting of the film, so as much as possible, I limit myself to knowing no more than what Isabel does in the script. Isabel’s naive, so I needed to stay naive. I needed to keep a kind of innocence. I would just skip over sequences that I wasn’t a part of because she wouldn’t know that those things were happening. I didn’t really take in the plot or the other characters’ lines. I wanted it to feel like the first time when we were filming.
BN
Is it fair to say that you felt you could approach the film that way because you already trusted director Manuel?
JA
I think that’s the foundation. I’m from theatre, I’m used to over-preparing everything. Preparing things, what would I mean on this line of dialogue, and why did my character say that, what is my character background, blah blah blah. When we did the short film, director Manuel really fostered this rapport and collaboration. We had a lot of meetings and talks, which were more like personal chats. Not work-related, instead of overly prepping, I could just put my trust in his vision and simply be a little more present when shooting.