Hollywood's on hold at the moment, trying to retool its production line to create gentler more sensitive films, with nary a mention of the words 'bomb,' 'terrorist' or 'World Trade Center.' The cineplexes have been forced to keep movies playing three, four weeks at a time, for want of anything new to show-- I've been seeing the ads for Bridget Jones' Diary and The Princess Diaries practically forever, though I haven't been able to (and possibly never will) see them.
Enter by sheer blind luck (I hardly call it design) Chito Rono's La Vida Rosa (The Life of Rosa), a noir crime thriller about con artist Rosa (Rosanna Roces) and her lockpicking boyfriend Dado (Diether Ocampo). Rosa and Dado keep half a dozen schemes juggling in the air, anything from carnapping to blackmail to stealing gifts from a wedding reception; their main source of income, however, are the smuggling and housebreaking operations led by Tsong, a crime boss, and his right-hand man Lupo (Pen Medina). Dado and Rosa have a love-hate relationship with Tsong: they depend on him for jobs and protection, yet at the same time feel an irresistible need to 'sideline'-- commit freelance crimes-- behind his back.
A busy life, complicated even further by Rosa's son Enting (Jiro Manio), an incurable gambler and thief, and Rosa's blind mother Lola Azen (Liza Lorena), who likes to sit before church entrances and beg for alms. For his part Dado worries about Jhing, his former girlfriend now married to another man, and Iris, Jhing's eldest daughter-- and possibly Dado's as well.
You think: too complicated, another case of a Filipino film throwing everything (including kitchen sink) into the brew. But Rono miraculously keeps it all airborne, juggling eccentric characters and fastbreaking situations with masterly ease.
More, something emerges-- a distinct point of view, a small-scale vision of Manila's urban streetlife that manages to be both cynical and compassionate at the same time. Its notion of cops and criminals as interchangeable (with cops collaborating if not actually leading crime rings) is as damning a view of the Philippine National Police (or PNP) as that of the recent Red Diaries (to which the PNP had voiced furious objections). Perhaps even more damning, because Rosa avoids disintegrating into cartoon melodrama; the film's milieu is quietly, consistently realistic, made so by patient accumulation of detail-- detail you feel the filmmakers have gathered through observation and research.
The cast is as terrific as any you might ask. Angel Aquino turns the small role of Jhing into a gem of a performance, lovely and moving at the same time; Medina as Lupo is an appealing coward, a born second-in-command and yes-man who makes it to the top by default, then manages to cling there by developing practical smarts and, eventually, ruthlessness. Liza Lorena as Rosa's mother is an elderly yet handsome woman, a source of strength to Enteng and Rosa both; possibly her finest moment is at the train station, when she bids farewell by grasping Rosa's head and glaring intently, almost frighteningly, into her-- as if trying to will her glassy eyes into seeing her daughter one last time. Jiro Manio is amazing as Rosa's son; with little fuss he embodies a boy forced to grow up too fast too soon, yet somehow manages to hold on to something of a childhood. His relationship with his mother is one of the warmest least sentimental I've seen in recent Filipino films, easily one of the most natural.
Diether Ocampo shows no trace of his former pretty-boy image; his Dado is taciturn and intense yet strangely passive-- he depends on Rosa to take the initiative, prod him on with her ambition. There's something moving about the quiescence under his tough-guy exterior: all he really wants out of life is to be left in peace, a wish that may never be fulfilled. Rosanna Roces has always been more of a smart-n-sexy personality than an actress, quick to zap hapless lovers with a funny improvisation; here she's edgier, hiding a desperate vulnerability totally unlike her wisecracking sexpot. She holds the film together with a fully realized performance that goes beyond anything she's ever done before-- beyond anything I would have thought her capable of before.
I've always acknowledged Chito Rono to be an excellent technical director-- stylish without being really imaginative, distinctive without being truly unique. His recent output is nothing to be proud of, from unabashed hackwork like Istokwa (Stowaway) and Dahas (Force) to softcore porn disguised as pretentious art in Curacha, to the misguided feminism found in Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa? (Child, how were you created?), to the equally misguided misogyny driving his Laro sa Baga (Playing with fire). The one film of his that I felt stood out was Eskapo (Escape) a taut, vigorously told prison drama set during the Martial Law-- and that possibly because the film had been written by Pete Lacaba, one of the more politically aware writers currently working in the Philippines.
The script for Rosa is by Armando Lao, whose previous works include Jeffrey Jeturian's Pila Balde (Fetch a Pail of Water), Tuhog (Larger Than Life), and William Pascual's near-great psychosexual chamber piece, Takaw Tukso (Passion Play). Lao is one of the more underrated scriptwriters in the local film industry; he enjoyed a modest surge of prominence only as recently as 1998, through his collaborations with filmmaker Jeffrey Jeturian. I take special note of this because Rosa is the first Rono (and Star Cinema) film I've really liked since Eskapo, six years ago. Rono gives Rosa its style and helped create the remarkable ensemble acting, but the characters and their fleshed-out relationships, the story and aforementioned overall vision are uniquely Lao's. He deserves credit for being, at the very least, a full and equal collaborator in one of the better Filipino films to come out this year.
First published in Businessworld 10.1.01
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