Céline Roustan
One of the many sales representatives on the floor of a big mall in the Philippines, Vangie is on the brink of losing her job, as she struggles with balancing the expectations from her industrious boss and her family. How can her overzealous manager be so damn perfect all the time? In Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss, director Sonny Calvento uses comedy to capture the absurdity of a social reality that places numbers and results over employees’ well-being.
Describing his film as the “plight of the contractual workers in the Philippines”, for Calvento’s very specific brand of farcical narrative to be effective, it has to be rooted in legitimate facts. Revealing that his story is actually based on the recountings of a former sales lady at a famous mall chain, the director used his short to show “how ridiculous and oppressive some requirements can get when you are applying for the job, as well as maintaining the job once you get hired”.
Phyllis Grae Grande (L) and Mailes Kanapi as Vangie and her boss.
The thing that struck him when he started hearing these stories, was that despite how tragic they are, in the grand scheme of things, they were all delivered with a comedic tone. In the face of injustice, these employees had come to accept the situation and chose humor as a coping mechanism – “Humor as a sign of helplessness”, as Calvento describes it. This realization led him, and writer Arden Rod Condez, to the decision they should tackle this issue from a comedic lens, adding a dash of fantasy in the hope of making it relatable to the Filipino people and beyond.
From the very first shot of the film, it is undeniable that the frames are meticulously constructed, with the close attention to the finer details making it obvious that DP Rommel Sales’ cinematography is a very important storytelling tool in the production. The symmetry created by the aisles really constricts protagonist Vangie within a rigid environment, where she tends to stick out. Sharply written, the antagonist, her boss, is the epitome of perfection and performance to the point where her energy becomes part of the joke, clashing with Vangie’s nonchalance.
“We decided to infuse comedy and a little fantasy in a social realist subject because we want to explore the genre of comedy, being the best-selling genre in the Philippines” – Calvento on his aims for EMMMM
The dark humor is perfectly balanced between the screenplay and the comedic timing created by the quick editing. It allows the audience to not only enjoy the story but also have a beat to acknowledge how nonsensical the expectations are. Complementing the visual aesthetic, the jazzy score creates a pleasantly unsettling and engaging atmosphere, which works to draw the audience into the on-screen world. With the twist at the end, Calvento cleverly uses fantasy to make the underlying metaphor come full circle and expose not only the workers’ conditions but the importance of consumption.
Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss premiered in the Philippines back in 2019 and traveled throughout Asia before earning a Sundance selection in 2021, making it the first Filipino short at the festival. Also screening at Locarno and Palm Springs ShortFest, while EMMMM was Calvento’s first short, he had already directed the feature film The Decaying, back in 2017.
Currently working on a second feature film titled Mother Maybe, which from the description seems to have tonal similarities with Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss, Calvento sparked our interest for his next project, describing it as a film “about a son who gets reunited with his mother in Tokyo, Japan as their family joins an absurd but high-paying Japanese game show on TV”.