Whitney Houston's death could have been a scene from her debut pic

Flashback: The Bodyguard

MANILA, Philippines - I had an unusual sense of déja vu after viewing Mick Jackson’s The Bodyguard on HBO last week and learning later that one of its lead stars, Whitney Houston, would be buried in real life.

This is a complicated film to judge because this was Whitney’s film debut and it is seldom that we see inter-racial lovers on the big screen. The presence of Kevin Costner (with his immense acting credentials) I am sure was a big pressure for Whitney. Her acting wasn’t a disappointment but chamber acting must have been so tough and challenging with Kevin around.

The film is memorable because Kevin invested the part with such natural and spontaneous flair he actually looked and breathed the part. He was the character and he didn’t act it.

 His superb acting in the film actually called to mind Phillip Salvador in Lino Brocka’s Jaguar which was also about a bodyguard  with his difficult private choices. In terms of quiet intensity, the love scene of Whitney and Kevin was so much like the one by Phillip and Amy Austria in Jaguar.

Since it was her film debut, it was possible that Whitney had to rely more on her instinct than on her acting craft which in 1992 was on its infantile phase. The role is not strange to her because at that time she did the film, she was living the part.

Like it or not, the film was a slice of the celebrity life of Whitney as she hopped from one engagement to another, from one hotel suite to another and from one presscon to another. Her brand of acting surely communicated to everyone that a public figure’s life is difficult in all aspects of it.

With co-star Kevin Costner in a scene from 1992 movie

It is tough to fall in love as a public figure because in an uncanny sense, usually it’s the fans who dictate and judge. A famous singer falling for her bodyguard?

Unthinkable, to say the least.

It is also tough to be a mother as a public figure because the photographers don’t stop taking pictures even during her private moments with her child.

Nevertheless, the romantic thriller lives up to its genre when Kevin discovered at the later part of the film that the stalker was no other than his former Secret Service co-worker Greg Portman played with vicious and quiet veneer by Tomas Arana.

As a public figure coping with private sorrow, Whitney as the singer, Rachel Marron, didn’t do so badly in the film. Her role gave us a balanced view of what public figures go through and in the case of Kevin, what meticulous and highly-paid bodyguards go through coping with a difficult, but famous client.

As you get wind of Whitney’s troubled private life, you get to realize that in real life, she actually needed a good companion and a good bodyguard.

Her death in the Las Vegas hotel room the other week could have been a scene from The Bodyguard.