First Light

A middle-aged nun in a mountain convent in the Philippines who is mentoring an initiate in preparation for her vows has a crisis of faith of her own when she’s plunged into an influential family’s brutal cover-up of a construction site accident in First Light, the debut feature of Australian-Filipino director James J. Robinson. This intriguing slow-burner on commitment and corruption had its European premiere in the Harbour section of the Rotterdam International Film Festival. A rare co-production between Australia and the Philippines with a wholly distinctive voice at the helm, it should attract wider festival play and signal Robinson as a director to watch.

A well-cast Ruby Ruiz plays Yolanda, a warmhearted, unassuming but independently minded nun who believes in the spirit rather than the letter of religious teachings, and is in the habit of bending scriptural rules out of selfless intent if she believes it will soothe the hardships of others. She and her sisters inhabit one of the first convents that Spanish missionaries built four hundred years ago, a cavernous structure in which candles are the only reliable source of light, and softly illuminate their evenings. They are accustomed to co-existing in a tranquil, mutually supportive community, but bats flitting around the tower at night have been creating disquiet among them, with the nuns reading their unusual activity as an omen that the environment is out of balance.

As an end-of-life carer for the elderly mother of imperious, self-styled philanthropist Mrs De La Cruz (Maricel Soriano), Yolanda is accustomed to being in close proximity to mortality. But when she is called to deliver last rites to a young and terrified construction worker in a hospital bed, she is shaken to the core — not because of the untimely death, but because of the strange and suspicious circumstances around it. This is a film as grounded in earthly concerns of money and status, and the lengths some will go to maintain it, as much as in the inexplicable mysteries of faith, and the forest ghosts and portents that are frequently discussed. Yolanda is faced with an act of cruelty and hypocritical opportunism of a sort totally foreign to her, on a criminal scale that relies on many layers of society, from the police to the Church, to enable it and hush it up. So she is pushed to reevaluate her perspective on the way that religion functions around her, and her own relationship to her faith, in turn influencing her novice charge in an unexpected manner.

In other hands, First Light might have been a pure suspense thriller, but Robinson brings an introspective touch attuned to the quieter work of spiritual questing, and attentive to the kindnesses of modest gestures. At times, gentler, calm-paced interludes risk sinking the momentum of a plot that turns on the masterful centrepiece of a nightmarish hospital scene and a truly shocking crime, and a more definitive tonal direction might have made for a more cohesive, riveting experience to build. But handsome, moody framing and a palate of muted greens and grey-blues immerses us in a world full enough of quiet wonder to support existential musings (Robinson’s background is in photography, and teaming up with DOP Amy Dellar has proved fruitful).

This is a thought-provoking take on class power and piety, and a colonial-imported Catholicism that has not equipped its devotees to tackle an institutional rot that holds some human lives cheap. It is ultimately a film not about resisting or changing a broken society, but finding peace of mind, and one’s authentic self, within it. While the more action-inclined may find too much resignation to the status quo here, audiences will appreciate its willingness to shine a light on workplace exploitation and the dehumanising horrors wrought by entitled, unchecked privilege in the ongoing shadow of colonial repression, and its open vision of spirituality on the believer’s own terms, free of the behest of a fallible Church, with a holistic view of “God in all things.”

Director, Screenwriter: James J. Robinson
Producers: Gabrielle Pearson, Jane Pe Aguirre, Christelle Dychangco, Jane Pe Aguirre
Cinematographer: Amy Dellar
Editor: Geri Docherty
Cast: Ruby Ruiz, Kare Adea, Maricel Soriano, Emmanuel Santos, Soliman Cruz, Rez Cortez, Kidlat Tahimik
Sound Design: Stuart Harmon
Music: Ana ‘Roxanne’ Recto
Production companies: Majella (Australia), GoodThing Productions (Australia), Clou Media Productions (Philippines)
Sales: Independent Entertainment
Venue: Rotterdam (Harbour)
In Tagalog
118 minutes