The Dirtiest Movie of The Year
By Noel Vera
Segurista
Starring Michelle Aldana, Ruby Moreno, Gary Estrada, Albert Martinez, Julio
Diaz, Pen Medina
Written by Pete Lacaba and Amado Lacuesta
Directed by Tikoy Aguiluz
IT'S BEEN the year of the bold. Priscilla Almeda pulled off her top in a horse's
stable (Sariwa); Ruffa Gutierrez and a host of wet t-shirts followed
(Pinakamagandang Hayop). Rosanna Roces modeled ladies' underwear in Patikim ng
Pina; not to be outdone, co-stripper Natasha Ledesma mashed her breasts. Amanda
Page swallowed the outflow from a phallic showerhead (Sobra-Sobra, Labis
-Labis); Ina Raymundo in the same movie suffered rape via vibrator.
According to the MTRCB, those films are nothing compared to Segurista; after
all, they made it to the theaters, more or less intact. This film was given an X
rating, effectively banning it from exhibition.
So--why Segurista and not Pina ? Good question.
Segurista is the story of Karen (Michelle Aldana): top insurance agent by day,
beautiful GRO by night. As GRO, Karen meets wealthy, powerful men. As insurance
agent, Karen sells more than her body; she gets commission on top of her tips,
and fat bonuses for every target met.
The situation is so completely reasonable, so utterly logical it's incredible no
one has thought of it before (As a matter of fact, someone did: the film is
based on a true story). Director Tikoy Aguiluz and scriptwriters Pete Lacaba and
Amado Lacuesta take the basic premise and fashion a subtly savage satire on the
Ortigas/Makati corporate culture: on the little ants that infest the innards of
Metro Manila's bottle-green glass towers
You recognize them. They're dressed in collared longsleeves with power ties,
drinking mineral water and discussing stock options over a goat-cheese salad.
They take expresso in little tables outside coffee shops, pretending to enjoy
the refrigerated breeze blowing from giant mall airconditioners.
They're the vanguard of Ramos' burgeoning economy, his sleek corporate facade,
his Great Brown Hope (light brown; many are well-groomed mestizas). They work
long, hard hours, and when they leave office they want a reward: a Super Dry,
perhaps, or a Blue Ice. But nothing, for them, beats the feel of a karaoke mike
in one hand, a pretty young thing in the other, her tightly-wrapped bottom
squirming on a corporate lap while she mangles the lyrics to "My Way".
The joke is that Karen does more than service these young urban professionals;
she's one of them. She's professional, efficient, immaculately dressed. She
practices the proven techniques of networking, synergy, and the art of the soft
sell (they come to her; if they want her, they buy what she's selling). Even
funnier, she's beating them at their own game; they end up coming back to her,
wanting more.
The film is remarkable enough as a barbed portrait of Metro Manila; its heart,
however, lies further north, in the lahar wastelands of Bacolor, with Karen's
husband and daughter. When she goes home, Segurista becomes another film. The
wasted landscape recalls the wilderness the Israelites wandered in for forty
years; here, there, rooftops and telephone poles poke through, bizarre monuments
to the community that once was.
God chose two wicked cities, Sodom and Gamorrah, and razed them to the ground.
Bacolor, Pampanga looks as if God had caused the ground to rise up and swallow
the city whole.
In this desolation, thrown back to times so primeval even dinosaurs are missing,
the people of Bacolor have kept something that Metro Manilans have lost. It's
this something that Karen clings to, that keeps her going. Suddenly, the title
Segurista takes on a new meaning: Karen is taking no chances. She has lost
everything to the lahar: now she wants it back, and she's using the surest,
swiftest way to get it. Karen, like Flor Contemplacion in Tikoy Aguiluz's
previous film Bagong Bayani, is an overseas contract worker, an OCW exiled to
Manila to earn a future for her family. She's near the end of her exile, her
dreams within reach; then she falls in love, and it all turns into ashes.
Aguiluz has assembled a cast of wonderful actors, from Eddie Rodriguez's suave
elder executive to Pen Medina's sad little taxi driver. Albert Martinez shines
as a hedonistic dance instructor with a streak of sadism and Julio Diaz is
moving as Karen's loving, lost-looking husband. Gary Estrada as Sonny has that
precise mix of arrogance and insecurity so distinctive of Generation X (I have
to say that, having seen--or slept through--Sobra, Pinya, Sariwa, Showgirls and
Basic Instinct, none of them generated the kind of sexual heat you felt between
Estrada and Aldana. With hardly any nudity, I might add).
As Karen's best friend, Ruby, Ruby Moreno gives the best performance. Her Ruby
is a mix of hard-earned wisdom and foolish romanticism. Unlike Karen, she has no
dreams waiting for her in Pampanga: her life is here right now, and she wants to
enjoy it now. Moreno takes this silly little character and fashions something
warm and oddly touching. A cineaste who's seen her in the Japanese All Under the
Moon (for which she won thirteen different awards as Best Actress) thinks she
gives a better performance here.
But as good as Moreno is, this is basically Aldana's film, and she carries a
difficult role with grace and dignity. Aguiluz uses her ice-queen persona to
good effect, presenting her as a sexy, unreachable object of desire. When things
go wrong, when her life starts falling apart, the icy facade cracks and
crumbles; the pain and loss on her face is almost unbearable to watch.
So--if the film is so good, why is it being banned? You have to remember that
even with Jess Sison at the helm, the MTRCB is still using the same rules that
banned Schindler's List, or The Piano, or Priest. So many breasts here, so many
pumping scenes there: tally the total and bingo! An "X". It's still the same
moronic system, and only a congressional motion might change things for the
better (Ironically, All Under the Moon, the award-winning film for which FVR
congratulated Moreno, will be threatened by the same rules. I can see the
Newsweek headlines: "President congratulates actress for film President's
censors will ban anyway." Nice.).
But then, maybe it's more than just a formulaic law applied idiotically. Maybe
the censors didn't like the sarcastic things that Aguiluz, Lacuesta and Lacaba
have to say about our youthful businessmen, about our Great Light-Brown Hopes
with their cellulars and laptops, about Philippines 2000. Maybe it's the
insistence on dealing with dark, unpopular subjects that we don't want, the
digging up of dirt we'd rather not see. Maybe it's not the sensuality, it's the
honesty.
Maybe they're right: it is the dirtiest film of the year.
From The Manila Chronicle, April 96
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