Flor
The biggest...
The Flor Contemplacion Story is an event. It had a high-powered premiere at
the New Frontier Cinema in Cubao, a decaying, decrepit old theater where
thousands of people crushed themselves against the gates to be shoved around and
bullied by rude and insensitive theater staff. The entire cast glided past the
crowd into the theater, jewelry glittering under the brilliant klieg lights of a
live television broadcast.
And the film itself? From the first frame onwards, Nora Aunor takes command of
the screen, and she doesn't let go: 'Mga walang hiya kayo! Putanginaniyo!' she
shrieks, hands holding the prison bars in a death grip. At one point she spits
straight into a guard's face. This is the Superstar's comeback film, and no
one is going to get in her way.
Not even Flor Contemplacion. You watch with bated breath for Aunor to make a
major misstep, but she maintains her intensity for the length of the film
without losing her dignity. It's an impressive performance, but not once do we
believe that we're seeing an ordinary woman caught in extraordinarily
frightening circumstances. She struggles heroically every time the guards lay
hands on her, and yells insults as they leave. When her children visit her in
prison, she fires off motherly advice--commands, really--as if she hadn't been
away from them for years. Even in the torture scenes, she's shot from overhead
and posed like a suffering Christ; in agony, yet somehow untouchable,
inviolate. Compelling, but it's simply not Flor.
Among the star-encrusted cast, Julio Diaz and Jaclyn Jose come off best as
Efren Contemplacion and his girlfriend, mainly by resisting the general rush to
be the most dramatic onscreen. Caridad Sanchez and Rolando Tinio bring some
welcome relief with their cool and professional presences. Vina Morales and Ian
de Leon--included to appeal to the 'Hibanger' crowd--look ridiculous beside the
real Contemplacion twins. Ronaldo Valdez, Tony Mabesa, Ali Sotto, Rita Avila
and Amy Austria as Delia Maga struggle with underwritten roles to little
success. The script by Ricky Lee is weighed down by cumbersome flashbacks and
an endless line of dramatic climaxes--a major disappointment, since his last
collaboration with Aunor resulted in the hallucinatory classic Himala. Director
Joey Lamangan heroically manages to hold everything together--he has to, with so
much riding on it--but the strain shows. He includes some clever shots to
please the critics: Aunor emerging from the dark beyond a mosquito net; Diaz
and De Leon sitting in a little bamboo hut suspended over backlit water. But he
fails to give the story any momentum, and when Aunor isn't suffering or being
tortured, the movie sags. Overall, Flor is better--somewhat--than the
hysterical Inagaw Mo Ang Lahat Sa Akin, but not quite as good as Eskapo; a
pity, because Flor's story is stronger.
At SM Centerpoint, the lines for Flor rivalled Die Hard With a Vengeance.
Hopefully she can go on from this boxoffice success to work with other
directors: Chito Rono, Ishmael Bernal (her director in Himala), and Mario
O'Hara (who directed her in the great Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos). I wish her
well; Nora Aunor has been in too many wonderful films to want her gone forever.
...And the best.
Bagong Bayani by Tikoy Aguiluz is the underdog of the two films: made in two
months on a shoestring budget, it's been plagued by unaccountable production
delays (due to pressure from Viva, perhaps?), and so far no theater has agreed
to release it, so the closest you might get to it is through this review. Which
is a filthy shame: Bagong Bayani is the best Filipino film of the year. 'But
the year's only half over,' you might complain. Actually, I think this is the
best Filipino film since Orapronobis in the late 1980's.
Aguiluz, as probably no one can remember, did Boatman. Ronnie Lazaro was
excellent and Sarsi Emmanuelle--to everyone's surprise--gave an unsentimental,
entirely natural performance as a pair of toreros--live sex performers. As
portrait of two lonely people living at the edge of the hell that is urban
Manila, it was one of the finest films--erotic or otherwise--made during the
late Marcos years.
Instead of a career devoted to skin flicks, Aguiluz sharpened his teeth on
documentaries, notably 'Balueg' (not the quickie action flick with Philip
Salvador). He pours that not inconsiderable experience into this film: parts of
actual interviews mix deftly with dramatizations of specific episodes; the
outside and inside of Changi prison were filmed with hidden cameras (Aguiluz
reportedly dressed as a turbanned Indian to film the prison gates; when a guard
spotted him, he literally had to run to save the film footage).
From the first frame onwards it's obvious that this is not going to be your
usual Carlos J. Caparas massacre flick. Flor Contemplacion (Helen Gamboa) is
led, bare-footed, to the gallows; she is followed by a restless camera,
seeking her out from every angle--handheld, tilted, low-angled, panning. The
execution itself happens swiftly in a series of shots so fluidly cut they have
the smoothness and finality of a hanged man's sperm emission.
The film shifts back to Flor's interrogation: she is forced to stand for
hours, deprived of food and water, while the CID officer (an intensely
convincing Pen Medina) strikes her. I was told that this was the first time
Helen Gamboa gave a real performance. If so, it was worth the wait; Gamboa is
riveting as she shows us the final stages of exhaustion without resorting to the
standard excess hysterics of Filipino acting.
It's said that Chanda Romero wants to sue this film, because the part of Flor
was promised to her. But her performance as Delia Maga is no disappointment.
She's always been an extremely talented actress, and her acting has never felt
more honest and open than here. The scene where she discovers her ward drowned
is especially fine: having a good idea as to what her employer might do to her,
she picks up the phone and literally has to force herself to call him; you can
see the terror in her trembling hands. But her best moments are spent with her
fellow actress. Romero and Gamboa establish an easy but close rapport; we
sense the loneliness that draws them together. The fact that their employers
allow them to see each other about once a week only strengthens the tie.
Aguiluz underlines the enforced isolation by showing us Flor's room: a tiny
cubicle nearly filled up by a single cot, where a hi-tech TV set that must have
cost a month's wages has to sit on the room's one folding chair. Flor, in being
convicted, had only exchanged one prison for another, a living death for a real
death. One shot actually illustrates this visually: as Flor climbs the
apartment stairs to meet Delia Maga for the last time, the camera follows her
past darkened corridors and bright windows as if she was fading in and out, her
existence uncertain.
One of the film's finest sequences takes place inside Changi prison, where Flor
meets Virginia Parumog (Irma Adlawan). Their early scenes have a deliciously
tentative feel, as Virginia tries to draw Flor out of her
torture-and-drug-induced shell, and their friendship begins to firm. I have
rarely seen acting--Filipino acting--as delicately played as this. As examples
of female bonding, these short scenes (plus those between Flor and Delia) put
the more expensive and supposedly more talented cast of Little Women to shame.
Irma Adlawan as Virginia gives an astonishing performance: warm,
intelligent, deeply compassionate. She senses Flor's enormous need, and her
strength and sympathy grow to match that need. In one scene, Virginia reads a
note smuggled to her by Flor. While Gamboa narrates Flor's suffering, Adlawan
suggests--by the inwardness of her crouch, the bend of her neck--how deeply she
feels Flor's words. Aguiluz clothes her in shadows, implying Virginia's total
immersion in Flor's state of mind, a state of near-total despair. It's a
tribute to the director and both actresses that with the simplest of devices--a
crouched posture, a bit of darkness, and a voiceover--they bring us totally
inside the souls of these two women.
It's instructive to see how The Flor Contemplacion Story and Bagong Bayani
stage identical scenes: when the children visit their mother in Flor, Lamangan
plunks a glass sheet wide as a panoramic movie screen between them, the better
to see Nora act; Aguiluz chooses verisimilitude, using a cramped little barred
window. This effectively forces the children to contort uncomfortably to see
her face, making you think: they aren't even allowed a good look at their
mother. In Flor, Lamangan forces Nora to dominate the scenes; in Bayani,
Aguiluz has them talk as normal people in their situation talk: greetings
first, then important business, then small talk, then despairing silence. The
progression happens quietly and naturally; finally Flor and her children are
reduced to pressing their palms to each other through the glass.
A few flaws: the music during Flor's execution at the start of the film is too
dramatic. Aguiluz lessens the impact of the children's' prison visit by
repeating it twice. Pete Lacaba's otherwise excellent script sometimes tends to
speechifying, sometimes uses dialogue to drop plot points.
The mix of dramatization and documentary recalls The Thin Blue Line, about the
arrest and conviction of an innocent man for murder. Line attempted to
deconstruct events, repeating them over and over again until you see the
contradictions in the prosecution's case against the accused; Bayani assumes
Flor's innocence, giving the Singaporean version only a token glance. It might
have helped Bayani's case to adopt a more objective tone, giving time to both
sides (but then, we wouldn't have all these wonderful performances). As it is,
Bayani doesn't seem concerned with the question of guilt so much as with
depicting Flor's life, at which it succeeds, vividly. The use of documentary
footage broadens the implications of her story, turning it into the story of all
OCWs abroad.
You feel a kind of impassioned anger, a sort of exalted sadness watching this
footage. A pair of Singaporean youths give their comments to the camera: 'I
think that Filipinos are overreacting,' one of them says. 'How can they feel
sorry for a murderer who killed a child and a fellow Filipina?' The camera is
silent as we watch them smile their pleasant smiles. Then Aguiluz complicates
our anger by showing us Filipina OCWs still left in Singapore. 'If Singapore
is wrong, it's too late--she's already dead,' an office worker pleads, as if
nervous that her boss might see this film. 'Hello Philippines!' a maid waves
gaily, striking a pose--she has a plucky courage--'I've been here seven years.'
Her position on the issue is summed up in one sentence: 'if the findings show
that Flor is innocent, I'll go home. If Flor is really guilty, then I hope I
can stay and keep working.' In other words: I can't help what happens in
politics, but in the meantime, let me feed my family.
June 12 is Independence Day, so let's ask the fashionable question: was Flor a
hero? Yes, according to The Flor Contemplacion Story: Nora plays her as a
defiant martyr who spat in the face of her torturers, played Supermom to her
children and was failed by everyone from her husband to the Philippine
Government. Yes, according to Bagong Bayani: she was a frightened woman who at
first had little idea of what happened to her and why; but as Helen Gamboa
plays her, she found a dignity and humanity she never had as a domestic helper.
You choose which Flor you prefer.
From The Manila Chronicle, June 95
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