Mother Love
May Nagmamahal Sa Iyo
Starring: Lorna Tolentino,
Stefano Mori, Jaclyn Jose, Ariel Rivera, Gina Pareno, Tom Taus
Written by: Ricky Lee and
Shaira Mella Salvador
Directed by: Marilou
Diaz-Abaya
I SAW this picture with a
Japanese friend who didn't know Tagalog. We watched the first scene
as Louella (Lorna Tolentino) gives up her child to a priest (Rolando
Tinio, of all people!). A classic scene, done countless times, but
you wouldn't know it watching Tolentino: her hair in a disarray, her
eyes slightly wild, her hands clutch the infant helplessly,
hopelessly, as she instructs the priest in a trembling voice on the
proper care and feeding of her son. My friend didn't need a single
word translated.
Seven
years later Tolentino is a domestic helper in Hongkong. You have to
give the producers credit for actually shooting in Hongkong; but you
also give Marilou Diaz-Abaya credit for not allowing the Hongkong
shots to look like a moment of Star Cinema spending. The sequence
falls seamlessly into place and drives the story forward; it actually
adds insight into Tolentino's character. She's taken her motherly
love and poured it into her young charge--up to a point. When the
time comes for her to go, the child is devastated; Tolentino leaves
with hardly a backward look. You find yourself nodding yes, that's
how I'd act in her place, and of how many local films can you
truthfully say that?
Tolentino
comes home to an embittered mother, Rosing (Gina Pareno), and a
neglected boyfriend, Nestor (Ariel Rivera as--an honest policeman?).
Her recent experience as babysitter has left her vaguely
dissatisfied; she wants to find the child she gave away long ago. Her
search leads her to Conrad (Stefano Mori), a dirty, disheveled
urchin. Their eyes meet. Could this be her son?
I sat
with bated breath, waiting for that fatal moment when the soap-opera
plot slips on its frothy suds. It's a new form of suspense, uniquely
Filipino, developed from years of watching promising local dramas
that ultimately disappoint.
The
moment never really happens. Like an unlikely swan the film flaps its
wings once, twice, catches an oncoming wind, and soars; you're left
in your seat with your face slowly turning blue.
An
unlikely swan, indeed. You'd never guess it from Marilou Diaz-Abaya's
previous film, Ipaglaban Mo,
an exercise in feminist hysterics. Here she's cooler than she's ever
been; her touch has never been more sure. You see it in her deft
handling of the superb cast. She takes Ariel Rivera's wooden acting
and brings it miraculously to life: an honest cop is unbelievable,
but a cop as earnest and awkward as Rivera is funny and rather
endearing. Who cares if he's fictional? You can hear the Rivera fans
in the audience falling in love all over again with this subtly
seductive illusion.
Claudine
Barretto is unusually fine as Louella's young sister. It's a small
role, but in a film like this there really are no small roles; each
is given a life of his or her own. Gina Pareno as Tolentino's mother
gives a gem of a performance. Like Louella, she's an abandoned
mother, and she can't forgive her daughter for following in her
footsteps. Pareno tortures Tolentino with tight-lipped, angry
silences. When she has anything to say, the words come out swift and
barbed; Pareno takes them and whips them across Tolentino's face.
Jacklyn
Jose turns in a luminous performance as the housemaid who rescues a
child (Tom Taus) from physical abuse. She manages to make her
virtuous character not just believable, but moving, and for once her
performance snaps into place as part of an ensemble, instead of
sticking out in an acting vacuum. Taus plays the abused victim with
horrific realism; when his bruised cheeks stretch into a tentative
smile, you can't help but shudder.
Stefano
Mori is everything you hope for in a child actor and almost never
get. His Conrad is a rebel; dirty, spirited and profane. He'll punch
a nun in the stomach, then charm her with a gap-toothed smile. What
keeps his performance from being sickeningly cute is the fierce, hot
core of anger you see in him. He's been abandoned by his mother and
the world; now he wants--what? Revenge? A mother's love? The film's
biggest flaw may be in not pushing this character to its limit; we
might have ended up with the despairing cherubs of Shoeshine, or the
angel-faced demons of Los Olvidados
or Pixote. This
reservation aside, Mori handles himself well--so well you want to see
him in stronger roles.
Tolentino
as Louella is passionate, confused, loving, torn. She never tries for
easy dramatics; you cry long before she even sheds a tear (witness
the scene when she gives up her son). Her intelligent, understated
acting looks better and better with every movie she makes; this one
could well be the performance of her life.
Kudos
to the production crew: the quietly beautiful photography (by Ed
Jacinto), the crisp, clean editing ( Jess Navarro and Manet Dayrit),
the (for once) unobtrusive music (by Nonong Buencamino). As
scriptwriter, Ricky Lee has never been stronger or more dramatic.
Unusual for Lee, the script is also well-balanced and free of moral
rhetoric--no one breaks into a speech in this picture, no one stands
to deliver a sermon. The Hongkong scenes at the beginning and the
ship full of children near the end, both big-budget production
scenes, don't overwhelm the rest of the film, which remain focused on
Louella and Conrad. You wonder how much of this, and of the
remarkably believable dialogue, is the influence of Shaira Mella
Salvador, who (as far as I know) is writing for the first time.
From
the intensity of Brutal,
through the realism of Moral,
to the gothicism of Karnal,
Diaz-Abaya has always been on the side of women, and it shows: the
film has almost no significant male characters except for Nestor,
who's thoughtful and passive. To this recurring theme she adds the
subject of blood, the importance we give to it, to our actual
relatives as opposed to friends and relatives we choose. Blood is a
favorite Filipino obsession. At its extreme, this obsession leads to
nepotism, racism, power dynasties--corruption in the name of blood.
At its most extreme, it leads to feuds, battles, war: blood spilled
in the name of blood. With this film, Diaz-Abaya suggests that the
alternative--the son or mother you choose, the bond that two people
form--can be as strong, if not stronger, than mere blood.
It's
a measure of Lee, Salvador, and Diaz-Abaya's achievement that none of
this heavy philosophizing weighs down the film. You don't really
notice anything else: for minutes at a time, what's onscreen is life,
real life, and you are under its spell. An enthralling film.