US papers give Crying Ladies good reviews

A few issues ago, Funfare reported that Unitel Pictures’ Crying Ladies was opening in theaters across America, with producer Tony Gloria leading Filipinos and other film buffs in welcoming his movie calculated to surpass the impressive showing of Unitel’s other movie, American Adobo, which was also shown (in art houses) in the US.

Crying Ladies has been getting good reviews in US papers, including Village Voice, The New York Times and TV Guide which said in an article entitled Wail of a Tale, "...Mark Meily’s formulaic comedy about a pretty con artist reformed by love for her small son is tailor-made for a Hollywood remake of the ‘you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, your heart will be warmed’ variety..."

I’m printing verbatim the brief but favorable review by Mark Holcomb in his Village Voice column Tracking Shot:

Simultaneously shameless and streetwise, acerbic and cloying, Mark Meily's Crying Ladies strives for and largely achieves a hard-edged chick-flick aesthetic. Filipina singing/acting/product-endorsing workhorse Sharon Cuneta plays Stella, a down-on-her-luck Manila divorcée who, along with two equally desperate gal pals, hires on as a professional mourner at a Chinese funeral. Cuneta delivers an engaging, surprisingly coarse performance, considering her onetime Philippines-sweetheart status, and the subtle revelations concerning ritual and loss in Meily's story serve her well. More judicious editing was surely called for, but Crying Ladies succeeds as first-rate melodrama.

And here are excerpts from The New York Times review entitled Mourners for Hire by A. O. Scott:

A hit in the Philippines, where it won six awards at the 2003 Metro Manila Film Festival, Mark Meily's Crying Ladies is a loose and genial soap opera about three working-class Manila women who are hired as mourners for a funeral in the city's Chinese community.

According to the movie, the Chinese practice of employing women to wail for the dead, once common, is on the wane, but the Chua family nonetheless insists on a traditional send-off for its patriarch, a philanderer and possible gangster named Washington. His son, Wilson (Eric Quizon), hires Stella (Sharon Cuneta), a sometime petty thief who has lost custody of her young son after serving a year in prison, as a crier.

Stella, a second-generation crier, recruits two of her friends: Choleng (Angel Aquino), a pious Roman Catholic who is nonetheless having a guilty affair with another woman's husband, and Aling (Hilda Koronel), a shopkeeper who clings to the fading memory of her movie career, whose high point was a bit part in a picture called "Darna and the Giants."

In the easygoing, unembarrassed world of Crying Ladies, it seems perfectly natural that a stranger should recognize Aling from her decades-old role as a villager crushed by a marauding monster. This may also be a sly joke by Mr. Meily, since Ms. Koronel, like Ms. Cuneta, is a major Philippine movie star. With a refreshing lack of vanity or pretension, these actresses play their ordinary, hard-luck characters with generosity and grace.

Mr. Meily, who directed the film from his own screenplay, gives the audience quite a few plot lines to keep track of. Some, especially those involving Choleng and Aling, are handled in a fairly perfunctory manner, yielding little emotional payoff...

...The movie wears its many clichés lightly and without embarrassment. If it were more tightly constructed, Crying Ladies would probably also be more relentlessly melodramatic.

But a movie about people who cry fake tears for money, and for complete strangers, would be ill advised to indulge in displays of overwrought emotion. Its most winning attribute is a kind of sloppy, unassuming friendliness, a likability aptly reflected in its characters.

Right on, Vangie!

Congratulations to Evangeline "Vangie" Pascual on the ninth anniversary (last Feb. 21) of her radio program Echoes of the Heart on DWIZ 882 kHz on AM, 2:30 to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 to 4 p.m. Saturdays.

The former Miss World first runner-up (1973, who politely refused the title when Marjorie Wallace of USA was dethroned) dishes out words of wisdom and pieces of advice especially to women on topics ranging from sleepless nights to widowhood to menopause to orgasm.

The ninth-anniversary event included, among other activities, poem-writing and a painting contest.

In her spare time, when not busy with her radio show, TV appearances and movies, Vangie herself paints. She is a member of the Film Artist Group composed of creative painters from showbiz. She participated in a recent exhibit by showbiz artists at Muebles Italiano, organized by Rei Nicandro.

Vangie is inviting everybody to tune in to her program "to celebrate the limitless capacity of having an open mind and a loving heart."

Special service for Nestor

A special service for Nestor de Villa (Gines Soriano), who died last Saturday at 75, is scheduled tomorrow night (Feb. 26), 7:30, at the Christ Commision Fellowship (CCF) at St. Francis Square, Alabang Hills, Ayala Alabang, with Nestor’s LVN colleagues and friends of the Soriano family. Nestor and Marilu Cacho’s son Joby, a pastor, will do the service.

(E-mail reactions at [email protected])