Laurel Fantauzzo - The First Impulse

The First Impulse is a most remarkable convergence of biography, true crime, reportage, social commentary, and personal memoir. Laurel Fantauzzo chronicles the lives of Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc with deep love and respect, and the circumstances surrounding their deaths with none of the lurid sensationalism that taints most crime reporting in the Philippines. At the same time, she seamlessly explores the questions of belonging, identity, family, and homeland.

F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)

In The First Impulse, Laurel Fantauzzo lays bare a complex and compelling tangle of personal narratives: hers and those of her subjects, the murdered cinephiles Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc. Here, class, ethnicity, and contemporary Philippine realities intersect in unsettling ways. A haunting, unfussy elegy of young lives as much as it is a whodunit, Filipino-American Fantauzzos work will cause you to ponder and appreciate the interrogatory restlessness and intelligence of those whose belonging is simultaneously claimed and disavowed by multiple worlds.

Luis H. Francia (A History of the Philippines)

The First Impulse offers a compassionate and unwavering look at the complex social dynamics of the Philippines, from the privileged scions of the wealthy who have the luxury and leisure to become filmmakers, authors, and critics, to the underclass, who cannot afford the price of the ticket but yearn for it all the same. While our sympathies are clearly with the young murdered couple at the heart of this story, theres something here that speaks to larger tragedies of history and social inequality, making the circle of victimhood as large as the archipelago itself.

Robin Hemley (Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday)

This is a rewarding story that extends far beyond the Philippines, to questions of identity, class, and family. I wish Fantauzzo could work her magic with every news story she comes across, and the world is a better place because she chose this one.

Kerry Howley (Thrown)

This is a true, moving story of star-crossed lovers, but thats just the window into the dysfunctional world that Fantauzzo deftly dissects. The saga of the young film critics Alexis and Nika becomes absorbing ruminations on cross-cultural relations, the power of cinema, and personal motivations, including the mysterious attraction that drew both Alexis and the author back to the exasperating homeland of their migrant families.

Howie Severino, GMA News

THE FIRST IMPULSE
Copyright to this digital edition 2017 by
Laurel Fantauzzo

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written approval from the copyright owners.

Published and exclusively distributed by
ANVIL PUBLISHING, INC.
7th Floor Quad Alpha Centrum
125 Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong City
1550 Philippines
Phones: 477-4752, 477-4755 to 57
Fax: 747-1622

Website: www.anvilpublishing.com

ISBN 9786214201440 (e-book)

Book design by Carina Santos
E-book formatting by Arvyn Cerezo

Photographs by Christian Yambing

Photograph courtesy of Chris Tioseco

AUTHORS NOTE

This is a work of nonfiction. No scenes or individuals are invented.

For moments I did not personally witness, I reconstructed action and dialogue as it was related to me through many interviews and documents. Any errors that may remain are my own.

As of this writing in 2016, the criminal case remains unresolved. To respect the perilous progression toward justice, I have omitted some names from these pages.

FROM CTV.CA

Thu. Sep. 3 2009

10:10 AM ET

... Four suspects are wanted in the slaying of a Filipino-Canadian and his Slovenian girlfriend, both film critics, who were shot dead in the home they shared in suburban Manila....

... Alexis Tioseco, 28, and his 29-year-old girlfriend, Nika Bohinc, were killed late Tuesday, in what police believe was a botched robbery at their home in Quezon City....

... It is believed that the robbery was an inside job, involving a maid who worked for the couple. Tioseco and Bohinc showed up after the robbery began and were shot....

... Tioseco and Bohinc met at a film festival in the Netherlands about two years ago....

I write subjectively, which, despite the striving to capture the totality and penetrate into the depth, holds for everything that human beings create

Nika Bohinc, Focus, Ekran, 2008

The first impulse of any good film critic, and to this I think you would agree, must be of love.

Alexis Tioseco, The Letter I Would Love to Read to You in Person, Rogue, 2008

THE LETTER

Two years after they die together in the Philippines, I hear a theory about Alexis and Nika. A Filipina psychic sighs about them. Oh, this couple. Theirs is a very old connection.

Many eras before ours, the psychic claims, Alexis and Nika had agreed to meet and love each other during their lives, and into their next lives, and during every consecutive life after that. Even after their murders in 2009, Alexis and Nika had already agreed, in some spiritual territory beyond death, to meet yet again in the future.

I dont know what to make of the psychics claim. It asks too much of me. It asks me to believe in psychics. It asks me to believe in reincarnation. It asks me to believe in the existence of souls. It asks me to believe there is a kind of love that can transcend and endure beyond even the cruelty of murder.

Their friends say there was nothing mystical at all about Alexiss and Nikas first meeting in Rotterdam. It was 2007, at a film festival, where enthusiasts and creators share affinities and fierce opinions about the young, ever-evolving medium: cinema. Its only natural that crushes might develop between such cinema lovers in dark theaters, late nights at restaurants and bars, walks in foreign cities.

In January 2007, in the lobby of a Rotterdam hotel, Alexis sees Nika. Nika sees Alexis. Soon, they are both laughing.

With every new love, there is the sense of an arrival. But there is also a sense of departure. Every new love is its own kind of migration. You glimpse a new territory, your future in a new home, and you cannot help but compare the space before you with everything opening up in the space after you.

Say you are twenty-six, and your name is Nika Bohinc. After seeing Alexis, you whisper to your friends in Slovenian about his face, his tall stature, and you laugh. Maybe, if you are Nika, you inevitably think of the scene in your favorite film, Jules et Jim. The Francois Truffaut movie you love so much, you cant remember the number of times you have seen it, and youre planning to make your own film essay in homage to it. Maybe you think of the scene where Jim speaks to Catherine, the passionate, high-cheekboned, French New Wave character your friends say you resemble. I love the nape of your neck, Jim tells her. Its the part of you I can look at without being seen.

Maybe, if youre Nika, youve noticed that Alexis has already taken a photo of the back of your own neck, as you walked ahead of him toward the next movie screening in the chilly Rotterdam daylight. Soon, you sense, you will take your own photos of the young man watching you now. You will photograph his profile reflected in a dark hotel rooms mirror, as he looks at a festival program and wonders which movie to see with you next.