Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare) is so dense with imagery it’s hard to know where to begin or how to do it justice. It’s poetic and personal, political and mythological, comic, radical, innovative, and intuitive. It was written, directed, filmed, produced, edited, and starred in by Kidlat Tahimik. I don’t think it could have been made any other way. It is so idiosyncratic, fluid, and quirky that it needed a singularity of vision to hold it together. It’s a very impressive filmic essay that uses association, juxtaposition, and personal revelation to stir up a mass of creative ideas into a compelling statement about colonialism and Tahimik’s home country, The Philippines.
