3 weddings 3 funerals & a film festival

This year’s Metro Manila Film Festival is yielding a good crop of films, finally some truly deserving of the trophies and cash awards given out the other week. In between the parties and trying to get some end-of-the-year work done I caught three of the seven festival films which, incidentally, won the top three prizes: Crying Ladies, Mano Po 2 and Filipinas.

Manila’s fascination with things Chinois has now even extended to the afterlife, it seems. Two of the movies–Crying Ladies and Mano Po 2–are, practically in their entirety, about Chinese death and funeral practices. Two patriarchs–both coincidentally named Antonio or Tony; Chua in Crying Ladies, Chan in Mano Po 2–die, and the movies are set in the days following, during the wakes and the funerals, with brief epilogues to put conclusions to the stories of the other characters.

Mano Po 2 involves a lot of flashbacks, to how the lives of the characters become entwined. There are two weddings: the first, back when the story can be said to begin, has the young Tony Chan (Christopher de Leon) taking Sol (Kris Aquino, the role later to be taken by Susan Roces) as his bride, a marriage that would get her disowned for marrying an "Intsik".

The second is a showcase wedding of Chinese traditions, when Tony returns to China to visit a dying parent and dutifully takes the bride (Zsa Zsa Padilla, in some rather strange hair-dos) he had been betrothed to since childhood.

Thus the conflict in the life of this archetypical hard-working Chinese immigrant begins: two wives, two languages, two cultures. The plot thickens with the entrance of a third wife (Lorna Tolentino, a controversial casting move that grabbed headlines even before the movie was made), which prompts the first wife to leave him, taking a son he refuses to acknowledge as his.

The modus vivendi that prevails for many years as Tony Chan prospers in his business and his various families grow up–first wife away in the province, second and third wives established in different houses–shatters when the man is murdered, and there is only one man to be mourned by three women.

Of the four women, Padilla gives a fine performance as the second wife (hers is the oft-quoted line "basta ako, legal wife; siya kabit lang"), in the role surprisingly "rejected" by other actresses as not being substantial enough (I guess it’s what you make of the role that counts). Tolentino is practically one-dimensional as the "evil" third wife. Roces as the returning first wife at least manages to put substance into what essentially is half a role. Aquino, who takes the other half of the role, is leaps better than she was in Mano Po 1, the recent angst in her real life probably responsible for investing her acting with more depth.

Mano Po 2 in large part is a peek at the traditions of a culture that is a part of our society, yet apart. It paints pictures in broad, sweeping strokes, with large vistas, grand gestures. Crying Ladies, on the other hand, keeps it tight and focused, in the process able to pay attention to details and nuances that enhance the over-all quality of the movie.

There are three women here too, multi-dimensional, flesh and blood, grit and gumption women delightfully portrayed by Sharon Cuneta, Hilda Koronel and Angel Aquino. The movie isn’t cluttered by a plethora of unnecessary characters, keeping the focus on lead Eric Quizon (who won as best actor) and the three afore-mentioned ladies (Jo Ann Bitagcol as Quizon’s sister never even utters a word!). Mention must be made of Sherry Lara as the widowed mother, who gave a very real if limited performance, with perfectly accented Hokkien.

The movie takes very clever and interesting twists of plot, such that one is willing to forgive the "commercials" (for McDonalds and Alaska, products which lead star Cuneta endorses) unabashedly incorporated into the story.

There is a funeral too in Filipinas, albeit a "regular" military funeral (with taps and gun salutes) that was but a small part of the movie. There is a wedding in this movie too, a showcase Hindu wedding with all the frills and finery attending the traditional ritual. It is a marked–and welcome–departure from all the chinoiserie that we seem to be obsessed with at the moment.

Plot and cast of characters are more complicatedin Filipinas, convoluted even, and oh my, how they do shout at each other! The six siblings–Maricel Soriano (who won the best actress trophy), Dawn Zulueta, Aiko Melendez, Richard Gomez, Victor Neri (best supporting actor winner) and Wendell Ramos–plus matriarch Armida Siguion Reyna give performances equal to the demands of a movie like this.

While some may seek to stretch things and see the movie as reflecting the state of the nation (the title being what it is), Filipinas is a clear look at people struggling to survive life in the Philippines today: the realities of the siblings living and working abroad, families split because "kailangan kumita", the difficulties of those trying to make a living on these shores, the hidden hostilities, the long-buried grudges... and how things can come to an explosive boil when everyone comes home for the holidays.

My 17-year-old goddaughter saw two of the movies with me. Her conclusions? Mano Po 2 should have been called "Crying People" at the rate the characters were shedding tears, and why were all the members of the family Filipinas such "war freaks"? After those two movies she refused to come with me to watch Crying Ladies, which is a pity because then she would have had a good laugh or two. I wonder if she will agree to watch Captain Barbell or Fantastic Man with me?