‎Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012) directed by Lav Diaz • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Florentina Hubaldo, CTE

2012 Directed by Lav Diaz

In a rural area, a father forces his daughter into prostitution. Somewhere else, two men embark on a quest for a buried treasure.

Hazel Orencio Kristine Kinatana Noel Sto. Domingo Willy Fernandez John Elbert Ferrer Dante Perez Brigido Tapales Ana Arienda Erica Nava Jeffrey Sigua

367 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★★ 1

Going in I hadn't a clue as to what the CTE stood for in the title! Come to find out it stands for CHRONIC TRAUMATIC ENCEPHALOPATHY a progressive degenerative disease resulting from repeated traumas to the head! Keep in mind Florentina Hubaldo in all actuality is not about a young girl per se for she represents the country and its citizenry itself that have taken one too many blows to the head over the past 300 years of suffering and desperation resulting from colonial rule, war, devastating political regimes as well as destructive acts of nature! Knowing this in advance adds a whole new layer to this tragic story of poverty, greed and inhumanity at its worst!

Now you may…
Review by Josiah Morgan ★★★★★ 8

It sounds absurd to entertain the idea of rewatching a film that supposedly requires as much stamina as this, but I feel that when the day comes to take another punt at what very well be Lav Diaz's most 'complete' film, I'll find myself enjoying it even more.

He's essentially offering just another film about a truth many other filmmakers have already proven time and again: life is hard - but his stunning camerawork often elevates this concept to another level entirely, introducing light as a fixture to permeate the shadows rather than the other way around, just as the centerpiece sequences in this film utilize camera movement (a rare technique for a Diaz film) to highlight things that don't…
Review by Still Here🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★½ 5

It almost feels as if Diaz is telling the story through sound but just like basically simple sound acts so peculiarly, so act the shadows, the camera, the people. What feels seemingly paradoxical for Diaz, the film is told through the action, through the movement - not only because he uses handheld camera but because actors aren't acting but we are simply observing their "squirm".

Once focused on human for long enough, her/his actions become something more, really the interpretation of their personality; the ending feels almost banal for a moment, we keep guessing whether it ends but ultimately Diaz keeps the rhythm up so far that it becomes our rhythm and we forget everything to see everything better through…
Review by astrofisch

A fucking draining film, it takes so much out of you watching it, watching Florentina suffer and a couple of characters engaging in futile searches. There are no easy ways out in this film; even though there's nothing explicit in its portrayal, the fact that we spend that much time with the characters in their repetitive activities is exhausting.Filipinos may have a short memory, but Lav ensures that we remember.
Review by Smart_Monkey ★★★★½ 4

Avoid this review if you want to go in blind

This is one of Diaz's weaker films, and definitely not the one to start out with in his filmography (I'd point to Melancholia or Norte). But if this is really one of his weaker efforts then that says a lot about his track record.

Florentina is essentially one allegory about the horrible abuse the Philippines has undergone as a nation spanning 6 hours of suffering and trauma. It's a very simple allegory, and it's partly the simplicity which works to the film's strength because of how much brute force Diaz drives behind it. It's focused and relentless.

But the simplicity is also to its detriment because it doesn't have as…
Review by David Grillo ★★★★★

Diaz's is a cinema of negation which on occasion makes contact with the real. Full embodiment of the Adamic fall which stages much of his work. One however should take the opposite view, that of the torturer and Christ the feminine, and the holy spirit is the soul upon the body in the existential sense that keeps the body imprisoned.

We the viewers locate reality as she does, when we connect to the temporal space of trauma which is often inaudible, when Florentina reaches out to the giants she is not reaching to something more but the negation of nothing, reaching out to less than nothing

Recent reviews

Review by concorde ★★★★

플로렌티나의 마지막 20분은 정말 대단하다
Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★★ 1

Going in I hadn't a clue as to what the CTE stood for in the title! Come to find out it stands for CHRONIC TRAUMATIC ENCEPHALOPATHY a progressive degenerative disease resulting from repeated traumas to the head! Keep in mind Florentina Hubaldo in all actuality is not about a young girl per se for she represents the country and its citizenry itself that have taken one too many blows to the head over the past 300 years of suffering and desperation resulting from colonial rule, war, devastating political regimes as well as destructive acts of nature! Knowing this in advance adds a whole new layer to this tragic story of poverty, greed and inhumanity at its worst!

Now you may…
Review by Smart_Monkey ★★★★½ 4

Avoid this review if you want to go in blind

This is one of Diaz's weaker films, and definitely not the one to start out with in his filmography (I'd point to Melancholia or Norte). But if this is really one of his weaker efforts then that says a lot about his track record.

Florentina is essentially one allegory about the horrible abuse the Philippines has undergone as a nation spanning 6 hours of suffering and trauma. It's a very simple allegory, and it's partly the simplicity which works to the film's strength because of how much brute force Diaz drives behind it. It's focused and relentless.

But the simplicity is also to its detriment because it doesn't have as…
Review by David Grillo ★★★★★

Diaz's is a cinema of negation which on occasion makes contact with the real. Full embodiment of the Adamic fall which stages much of his work. One however should take the opposite view, that of the torturer and Christ the feminine, and the holy spirit is the soul upon the body in the existential sense that keeps the body imprisoned.

We the viewers locate reality as she does, when we connect to the temporal space of trauma which is often inaudible, when Florentina reaches out to the giants she is not reaching to something more but the negation of nothing, reaching out to less than nothing
Review by moniquekidman ★★★★½

As rigorous in content as it is in form. The fragmentation of the narrative places us directly in the perspective of Florentina, creating a dizzying descent into despair and madness. The film's style might be spare, but it is through that sparseness that the ugliness of humanity is uncovered, as if it were dug up by the two treasure hunters. Hazel Orencio as Florentina is simply sublime.
Review by Michael Stuhlman ★★★½

I've been trying to knock out as many of Lav's long format films as I can and with Mubi throwing a lot of them up over the last couple months I've been able to catch quite a few. This is the latest and it continues along with many of the same pros and cons I've come to expect from this phase in Diaz's filmography. The length can be taxing, though for the first half of the film I found things oddly relaxing. I think part of the issue is that because Diaz continues to use a similar mode his films are beginning to run together somewhat in my head. This is probably why his more recent and focused work like From What is Before and Norte do more for me as a whole than his odysseys like this or Evolution or Century of Birthing.
Review by Jaime Grijalba ★★★★

Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012)

8/10

This isn't the first time that I've felt that a Diaz film takes too much advantage of that its last hour is a knockout and the rest can't be as interesting or gut-punching as that. It clearly devises a metaphor for Philippines with the battered and wandering body of Florentina, who is constantly subject to many horrible events, all this while some people... search for a treasure that it's never to be found... look, I honestly don't want to complaint, nor I have a strong argument against this film, its tone, its pace or anything, because there are moments of honest and pure joy, which contrast tremendously with the rest of it and its harsh moments, but it's those silent sequences with Florentina and the giants, which I'm not sure what they mean, that I find myself marveling at.

I might need to rewatch this.
Review by jonmonteverde ★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

I guess I'm a sympathetic cougher, because after watching someone cough for ten minutes at a time my throat felt really dry. I didn't really get into the first half of the film, as some of the compositions struck me as too self-conscious and artsy, particularly when characters were posed just so and stood around like statues for five minutes at a time. When things got more straightforward at the midpoint, I was on board. Hazel Orencio, as Florentina, is alone onscreen for what feels like half the film, and she proves capable of carrying it. Florentina's recitations, which she initially uses as a coping exercise / memory test, attain a cathartic power as she gradually testifies to more and more of her horrifying reality, leading to one of Diaz's most haunting endings.
Review by SidneyLumetSuxx ★★★

There's not enough discussion out there about the merits of Lav Diaz's talents as a filmmaker. Probably because most people have no idea who he is since he makes perhaps the most demanding movies ever from a place people care or know very little about. If you told the average person, or even the average self-described “cinephile”, that a guy from the Philippines consistently makes films at least four-and-a-half hours long, they would freak out and think Diaz is certifiably insane. I'm not exaggerating. He's made 20 features that total to 5441 hours. The mean run-time for a Lav Diaz flick is 272 minutes (~4.5hrs); his longest film being 640 minutes (~10.5hrs) and his shortest 61 minutes. Only 9 of…