Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana looks as pretty as a postcard, but like Mike White’s series The White Lotus, its shiny veneer hides something much more sinister. Set at a posh Philippines golf course where visitors from around the world come to get some tee time, the luxury destination isn’t dissimilar from the all-inclusive resorts featured in the HBO comedy. The pair follow guests and workers alike to explore the two sides of this fabricated escape, where one class is meant to enjoy it while the other breaks their back to create an illusion of rest and relaxation. But while White Lotus mostly gorges on the interpersonal drama and broad comedy of its rich clientele, Filipiñana takes a decidedly subdued approach. The film follows the life of one uniformed worker and one of the club’s guests, using understated performances and visually striking compositions to point out the absurdity of these spaces. While the series is interested in the upstairs/downstairs dynamics for the punchlines, Manuel’s somber film uses stillness to reflect on and critique the inequality as no laughing matter.
Yet, the first scene of Filipiñana could be right out of White Lotus. A sweltering bus of tourists is led by a cheerful guide struggling to engage her stone-faced passengers. Outside, the sounds of Manila’s city life are noisy, crowded—everything these tourists are escaping. Once at the golf course, a serene quiet takes over as the camera soaks in the sun rising over manicured hills and water features. Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a teenager from a rural part of the country, is savoring one last moment to herself before reporting to work as a “tee girl,” a lowly spot in the pecking order of the club. Her job is to hand-place the ball so that all those at the driving range have to do is swing, and she stays seated close to the ground in order to quickly and efficiently move the ball into position. It’s a humiliating position, one that Manuel’s camera films between the legs of the golfers she’s assisting, making them look like they’re towering over her small frame.
The club’s president, Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman), engages Isabel in conversation, which she’s not used to, and she becomes a bit smitten after getting attention from one of the club’s top brass asking her personal questions. It’s the most personal conversation Isabel will have all day. While the story flits between the two sides, the guests and the workers, Manuel’s film centers Isabel’s experience, largely showing this privileged world from her perspective. This POV shift makes Filipiñana more aware of the workers’ plight than the amount of time White Lotus spends with, say, Belinda Lindsey (Natasha Rothwell), the masseuse who dreams of starting her own business, even if she is the most sympathetic character in the series.
At one point, Isabel picks up a side quest to return one of Dr. Polanca’s forgotten golf clubs, and like a key, the president’s golf club opens up portions of the club not usually accessible to her. This contrast in access for guests and workers mirrors Belinda’s journey from the first season of White Lotus, where she and her dream are abandoned by the whims of her wealthy would-be benefactor, to her experience in season three, where she’s allowed to enjoy the resort as a guest. With club in hand, Isabel gets to participate in a dance and sample a dessert by the pool, which is a tasty upgrade from her meager fish and rice lunch earlier in the employee cafeteria. But that taste of the sweet life is more than a stolen meringue; it represents the luxuries she’s surrounded by but can never enjoy, watching hungrily as the president’s son declines a slice of cake after lunch. In her mint uniform, she’s treated as part of the club’s décor. Her only respite is finding solidarity with other coworkers, gossiping about guests, and taking smoke breaks.
Elsewhere on the lush putting green, another young woman faces how differently things are done in the Philippines. Clara (Carmen Castellanos) is back home after studying in New York, golfing with her uncle (Carlos Siguion-Reyna), who offers her the chance to join his golf equipment company. Throughout the day, she looks uncomfortable from more than just the heat. She’s struck by how hard their caddies are working, carrying all of their equipment and even sitting in the back of the golf cart so as not to sit with their charges. In a passing comment to her uncle, Clara admits she’s only golfed on a public course back in the U.S. Her uncle responds that there are no such things as a public golf course there, meaning that all of the staff who can’t afford the club have likely never had the chance to play the game they spend their waking hours enabling. Isabel is even reprimanded for lying out in the sun on the golf course because as a “tee girl,” she’s not even allowed on the green turf to relax.
Clara eventually represents a common character in White Lotus, where few guests even register that other people are working around the clock to accommodate their every request and whim, and their bad behavior towards employees is played as buffoonery. Filipiñana is more concerned with cutting observations about the workers’ experiences. In one simple shot, Manuel shows the tee girls taking a crowded siesta in the languid midday heat. They are so cramped, they barely have room apart from each other. Yet, in the next shot, Isabel’s boss is sitting comfortably in her air-conditioned room watching TV on her break. In another scene, one of Isabel’s coworkers explains that part of the caddies’ job is to fish balls from the ponds, because the balls are worth more than what they make in a day. These are subtle, almost throwaway moments, but they add much more texture to the film and its characters than White Lotus’ few token moments focused on workers, whose stories often feel sidelined in favor of the messier, wealthier characters.
While each season of the show and the movie share a similar ending, a murder, how someone dies in these well-tailored environments is approached quite differently. In White Lotus, each season opens on a dead body, teasing an inevitable outcome until its climactic season finale reveals how the murder happened. It’s another punchline, its job to puncture the illusion that this idyllic getaway is a dream when it can just as easily turn into a nightmare. The murder in Filipiñana isn’t a gag. It’s an accident, quickly swept under the rug by getting rid of a body on one of the course’s ponds. It’s a stilted scene that’s chillingly cold and awkward, almost like a school play where most of the actors are stiff and barely move. The seemingly casual way the body is disposed of is reminiscent of the Philippines’ colonial subjugation and ongoing violence towards its citizens. The legacy is touched upon subtly in the movie, especially when Isabel is walking through a part of the club forbidden to employees showcasing old photos of the club that dates back decades, likely to the Marcos regime.
The practice of covering up the rich’s misdeeds is nothing new, but it’s a particularly poignant note for Filipiñana to end on, thinking of how the Marcos family tried to give the impression of wealth to the world while hiding its cruelty to the Filipino people, the ones who, decades later, voted in the next Marcos generation so that the cycle of violence continues. Although Filipiñana is dreamy and full of surreal imagery, Manuel’s visual style isn’t meant to make the audience laugh at the rich and feel good about themselves, nor to revel in lightly critiqued wealth porn. It’s an invitation to look closer and question why these systems are still in place.
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