When the Waves Are Gone

Lav Diaz’s film noir-infused police drama sees a modern-day Dorian Gray retreat to his serene childhood home to recover from a medical condition.

Lieutenant Hermes Papauran is regarded as the greatest detective in the Philippines – he is not. After years of execution-style killings on the streets of Manila in President Duterte’s infamous war on drugs, the world around Hermes is eroding, and complicit in the police force’s killings, he too has changed. Increasingly volatile, accused of assaulting his wife and now out of a job, Hermes is alone. When his inner uneasiness manifests as an extreme form of Psoriasis, he retreats to his family’s beach home to recover.

Meanwhile, a former colleague, Primo Macabantay, is released from prison. Primo’s trajectory in life appears to be on the up, he has found God and has the chance to start a new life, but a dark thirst for revenge burns within him.

Curator’s note
Casting poetic ambiguities aside, Lav Diaz’s police drama is a direct affront to President Duterte’s regime and his bloody war on drugs which saw police brutality shift to one extreme end of the scale, and press freedom sadly shifting to the other. Instead of fixating on the brutality, When the Waves Are Gone focuses on the effects of the war on drugs on the psyches of those left behind. Similarities have been drawn between the film and The Count of Monte Cristo, however the film feels more connected to The Picture of Dorian Gray, with Lieutenant Hermes Papauran's inner demons manifesting strikingly as a skin condition. Unlike Dorian Gray’s portrait, these scars are immediately visible and impossible to hide away.

When the Waves Are Gone premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival where it screened out of competition. The film was swiftly followed up with a prequel Essential Truths of the Lake which reunited audiences with Lieutenant Hermes Papauran years earlier. The two films are planned to be part of a "Hermes trilogy".