A gallery of ‘mourning’ girls

This calls for a celebration. Let’s drink and be merry.

That’s Assunta de Rossi speaking in Mourning Girls, playing a has-been bold star. To which the three other "mourning" girls agree: Glydel Mercado (ex-beauty queen), Chin-Chin Gutierrez (renewed Christian), and Juliana Palermo (sultry maid). No wonder Ricky Davao (dead man) is the happiest corpse in town, magically joining the four mourning girls in the celebration.

Although identified with drama, Assunta, Chin-Chin, Glydel, Juliana – and Ricky, too – prove in Mourning Girls that they can also excel in comedy. And Mourning Girls is infectious, contagious comedy, though the title may not say so. It’s an entry to the Metro Manila Film Festival.

Mourning Girls, which opens Jan. 1 nationwide, is truly a happy, funny way of celebrating 2006. It is the first comedy of director Gil Portes, who joined Senedy Que and Adolf Alix in writing the script loaded with funny situations and witty lines.

The paths of Assunta, Chin-Chin, Glydel, and Juliana cross at the wake of Ricky, who died while in "seventh heaven." Each of the girls claims to be the wife and great love of the deceased.

"Being in this movie is like winning an award," says Chin-Chin, who has an Urian for Maalaala Mo Kaya. But of course Chin-Chin is proudest of her citations as one of Asia’s achievers for keeping the environment clean and green, meriting her a Time cover.

The three other "mourning" girls agree that it was great fun doing the movie, making people laugh instead of cry. Glydel has a grandslam for Sidhi (Star, Urian, Academy, FAMAS); Assunta has Urian and Metro filmfest trophies for Hubog; Juliana an Enpress award for Triple X.

Also in the cast are Cogie Domingo, Cristine Reyes, Paolo Serrano, Ken Punzalan, MicMiel Dennison, Janna Victoria, Dexter Doria, Roy Alvarez, and with the special participation of Oskar Peralta. Mourning Girls is produced by Teamwork and Zennet World.