Tatlong Ina, Isang Anak

Three godmothers

Saw Mario O'Hara's Tatlong Ina, Isang Anak (Three Mothers, One Child, 1987) starring Nora Aunor years ago in a bootleg but the video was muddy and you could barely see what's going on. Cinema One put up a reasonably clear copy on YouTube-- in a few days ABS CBN will be unveiling a digitally enhanced version on theater screens-- and judging from what can be seen at the YouTube it's one of the loveliest, moodiest, most stylishly shot and lit Filipino comedies I'd ever seen. 

Hold-- Mario O'Hara, one of the grimmest most violent filmmakers in Philippine cinema-- doing a comedy? About a child? Nora (and frequent co-star Gina Alajar) being funny? And it looks good? Well that last bit makes sense: the film was shot by Johnny Araojo (Bagong Hari, Condemned, Bulaklak sa City Jail), Romulo Araojo (Bagong Hari, The Fatima Buen Story, Hesus Rebolusyunaryo), and Sergio Lobo (Himala, Manila by Night, Uhaw sa Pagibig). Looking carefully at Nora's filmography a good chunk of it is either musicals or comedy or both, and in them she often plays the straight man or delivers the punchline in deadpan. O'Hara far as I can remember has done only one other out and out comedy, Takot Ako Eh (I'm Scared! 1987) which he as much as admitted he did for the money-- but he often inserts humor into his dramas, everything from the girl who can't remember her boyfriend's name in Condemned to the jail guard hoping to get laid in a cemetery in Bulaklak sa City Jail. Aunor and O'Hara can be funny, it's just that their humor can get a little dark, even morbid. 

The script-- by Frank Rivera (who also did the production design) and O'Hara-- looks like it was lifted from John Ford's Three Godfathers but where Ford's comic takeoff from the Three Wise Men of the bible strands them in the middle of the Arizona desert, Rivera and O'Hara plunks their three wayward mothers in the teeming heart of downtown Manila, from its respectable bourgeoisie spinsters to its dank underclass of beggars, prostitutes, corrupt cops, and kidnap-for-ransom gangs. The three-- Au-au (Nora Aunor), Claire (Gina Alajar), and Belle (Celeste Legaspi)-- have their beaus Nonoy (Miguel Rodriguez), Dado (Toby Alejar) to be replaced by Jualdo (Dan Alvaro), and Bok (Bembol Roco); the women even have their elderly counterparts in Paraluman, Perla Bautista, and Olivia Cenizal, three auntlike spinsters who like to stick their upturned noses in other peoples' business. That's enough characters and subplots and complications for three productions, much less this slight but strangely charming movie. 

I keep mentioning a script-- the premise really kicks off when Au, Claire, and Belle acquire a child named Baby Doll (Matet de Leon, one of Nora's several children) and appoint themselves its guardian and adoptive mother; the child's real father, Nonoy, finds out about his child and is charged by his aunt (Paraluman) with taking his daughter away from the three-- and things get complicated from there. 

I keep mentioning a script but really this is just a series of loosely linked episodes where three women struggle to care for a child and maybe someday find the right man. Belle's family learns she's a bar hostess; she keeps trying to hang herself only the babe keeps crying for her attention. Claire is in love with Dado, who has an eye for passing women; finally Jualdo has to restrain her from throwing herself in despair under the wheels of an oncoming vehicle. Nonoy broke up with Au long ago-- that's how he ends up fathering a child with someone else-- but with their nightly orbits constantly crossing they can't help but be drawn to each other. 

There's no great theme, no urgent social message here, just an opportunity to enjoy the company of actors enjoying each others' company and their oddball roles, throwing whatever they can in the mix (and while we don't actually get a kitchen sink we do get a kitchen, with Matimtiman Cruz as a more than slightly cracked old lady dancing before her boiling cauldron waving a knife). 

Well, maybe there is a message, something O'Hara has been saying in many of his films from Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos to Bulaklak sa City Jail: that motherhood is a blessed troublesome vocation not everyone is willing to undertake but a lucky few-- stumbling or forced into it if necessary-- get to enjoy despite all the anxieties and heartaches. 

I mentioned Nora not normally being associated with comedies... but our first sight of her she's standing in the front doorway looking grim and serious before falling flat on her face. Gina Alajar plays chatterbox airhead romantic, and Celeste Legaspi is a cheerfully hedonistic hostess with klepto tendencies (at one point hiding out in a department store she swaps out her wet clothes for more fashionable threads and stuffs her handbag with costume jewelry while Bok follows close behind, sternly lecturing her on the evils of shoplifting). 

By film's end Au is tracking Baby Doll who's been kidnapped for the umpteenth time-- for real now, not just because her biological father wanted custody-- and is ready to rush into the kidnappers' lair armed with just a handgun (and a bright-red baseball cap with giant yellow lightbulb). How a bar girl manages to infiltrate a criminal den and eliminate all the dangerous criminals despite never having held a weapon in her life (not to mention sporting that ridiculous target-gallery hat), how O'Hara manages to stage and shoot a rescue operation that doesn't quite make sense spatially and sequentially-- is all squared neatly away with a flick of a pen and an extra twist of the plot. Done in high noirish style complete with looming shadows and blue-tinted windows and echoing sound effects and dreamlike slow motion and-- at one point-- a room glowing sickly Vertigo green. Does it all make sense? Not really. Does that matter? Not really. Did we have fun? Yes, really. Which of course is all that matters.