No Other Woman - Fun, Games and Infidelity

I chanced upon a late television show a few weeks ago that had two groups of the most flamboyant gay teens fighting over the loss of a cellphone (someone stole it and curiously returned it broken 2 weeks later). The show is called “Public Atorni” patterned after a US court show called “People’s Court”. The aforementioned court hears small claims, promotes mediation and dispute resolution. The show mostly tackles the pettiest squabbles that should’ve been dealt with among them than on TV, but hey, the livid accusations sometimes make for a diverting nighcap, i.e. if you’ve no better things to do than watch a female lawyer exercise her theatricality, with hilarious effects. Atty. Persida Rueda-Acosta, Public Attorney’s Office chief, hears the cases, then animatedly points to warring characters – “Asunto o areglo!” – as though her audience are a bunch of deaf dweebs. Besides, isn’t she aware that “pointing fingers” is actually bad manners? There are ethical books on this, so we’re prone to point that out. Anyway, we’re diverting!

The point being: Despite the almost trivial proceedings, the freewheeling verbal tussle between these pubescent homosexuals, you couldn’t help but listen and be amused! They have such florid ways of throwing verbal punches, not dissimilar to the smart exchanges found in comedy bars! They are entertaining and I was laughing myself out!

A few days ago, I watched Ruel S. Bayani’s “No Other Woman” and I could swear I’m transported back to that court house. It’s one drag show all over again! And though this was supposedly a domestic drama, I had the time of my life laughing away!

Capsule

Ram and Charmaine (Derek Ramsay and Cristine Reyes, respectively) make a loving young couple. Ram supplies furnitures for luxury resorts, but he struggles to rise above a negligent father and her father-in-law’s leering condescension. One day, he meets breezy and free-spirited Kara (Anne Curtis), daughter of the resort owner (Tirso Cruz III) he’s peddling his furniture wares at. Though Ram once vowed to be faithful, his resolve weakens where Kara’s concerned. After all, she knew he was married and she’s vowed never to be a “kabit” (mistress). This was just a consensual lay in the hay between consenting adults... with no emotional involvement!

Unfortunately, these trysts soon turn addicting (i.e. habit-forming). When Charmaine (Ram’s wife) begins suspecting there’s more to Ram’s constant disappearances, not to mention his hickeys, the philandering couple is already in too deep in their affair. They’re starting to care! That’s when Charmaine realizes that she must fight back and claim ownership to what’s rightfully hers. What becomes of Kara?

We’ve heard of such marital predicaments and situational narrative before, but what keeps “No Other Woman” entertaining is its campy approach to the arguments. Heck, even Charmaine’s mom (Carmi Martin) gushes with hissy lines as though she’s the anointed guru of relationships (she isn’t, her hubby’s probably jumping from one affair to the next): “Ang mundo ay isang malaking Quiapo, maraming snatcher. Maagawan ka. Lumaban ka!” Then: “Panahon na para i-pack mo na yang Lucy Torres mo, ilabas mo na diyan si Gretchen Barretto. Ako na ang bahala sa red stiletto mo!” And there’s more: “Ano ba’ng mahirap kalaban? Ang putang mahirap o ang putang mayaman?” Answer: “Pare-parehong puta lang yun!” I was going to stand up and curtsy, but I waited because I realized there could be more. I was right: “I’ll never be a pathetic boring housewife,” delivered with so much chili relish, my palate was clapping with glee. If you’ve heard the verbal exchange among the teen homosexuals in “Public Atorni”, you’d agree that they could fit perfectly into the film’s campy catfights!

Anne Curtis has always been competent with characters she's portrayed in the past, but that’s mainly because she coasts on her charisma and earnestness. "No Other Woman" is a departure from her usual girl-next-door persona (Yup, even her "Babe, I Love You" character was a doll!) In this film, Anne plays the delightful vamp to the hilt and doesn’t do badly as a concubine, which is a surprise since she is cast against type. However, it’s really Cristine Reyes who succeeds in controlled thespic strokes. She has obviously learned much from her older sister (Ara Mina, a great actress) how insight and sincerity are mined from within. When Cristine wails, “Bakit? May kulang ba sa luto ko? Pangit ba ako? Mababaliw ako sa kakaisip!” - you knew she meant it! And the film, and all its ill-advised humor, becomes real.

There are a number of mind benders in the story. You’re courting for trouble when you take your jealous wife to where your jealous mistress is - or is that such an alien concept? It was a hammer waiting to hit you in the head. And if such action wasn't meant to spite a lover, think of what Kara can do in her own territory! She is, if Ram didn’t realize, the owner’s daughter and is quite the power-wielding royalty in their own resort. She could castrate Ram if she wanted to. Of course, it makes for an explosive confrontation, but a realist’s option it sure isn’t. There’s more: Why would a “mistress” accept a wife’s invitation for dinner unless she’s bracing for a big meltdown. There are a couple of things worth noting here: delicadeza and guilt, not to mention “common sense”, but then maybe “sense” is farthest in the scriptwriter’s mind when he wrote this scene. In another, Kara shouts an accusation at Ram, "Minahal mo ba ako?" But wasn't she the one who smugly declared, "Shut up and kiss me, and don't you dare fall in love with me?" Who's contradicting herself?

Even the mistress' dad (Tirso Cruz III) is given acidic lines that might as well come from my Values Education teacher: "If you stop hating your father so much, maybe you'll turn into a better person." I was astounded. After all, he himself hated Ram's dad (a former friend and business partner who once defrauded him) so that line felt incongruent to the story. You do realize this overkill was unregulated. The audience would lap it up anyway, debah?

There's a lot of things that caught my (and my bff Iyaya's) attention in the movie: The hand bags are to die for, the shoes divine, and the bathing suits va-va-voom! Curtis and Reyes were such epitomes of beauty, and Derek overflowed with machismo! Unfortunately, all these don't make an excellent movie. It's gay fantasia filled with the most delectable battle lines, the ones we can only dream of using when confronted with usurpers in real life ("Baka makita mo pang nilagyan ko ng lason ang pagkain.") Otherwise, in a realist's world, the mistress clams up; the embarrassed wife runs home in tears; and there's no audience applauding a heated confrontation.

The last part turns messier than expected (Charmaine taunts Kara while the latter’s lounging peacefully by the poolside; Ram’s midnight visit into Kara’s room; the avoidable vehicular accident), each strain as manipulative – canny and circumspect – and “straight out of a cheap teleserye”. You bet!

Anne Curtis as lovely Kara



Anne Curtis





Cristine Reyes


Cristine Reyes


Derek Ramsay


Derek Ramsay


Derek Ramsay

Tumbok - Exhaustingly Marooned in Cliche

When I was a child, I had a yaya who flourished in her fantastical stories. It was a childhood replete with the most vivid tales of folk lore and superstitions. She loved scaring me until I was blue and shaking under my sheets. But then she would smile and assure me that bad things happen only to bad people. How naïve, right? But it was sweet, and I soon learned to cope. Children are resilient and learn to adjust in time. I still get my goose bumps when watching horror flicks, but I can now sit through a marathon of them wearing a poker face, seemingly without care, but with toes curled down below.

“Tumbok” is one of those superstitions that I’ve come across early on. It’s when a street or two converge, and this focal point becomes the epicenter of bad luck. This is the point of contention in Topel Lee’s “Tumbok”.

Young couple Ronnie (Carlo Aquino) and Grace (Cristine Reyes) inherit a room in a doddering, ramshackle building right where three streets converge. Most of its tenants have all but deserted this tenement, except for the few occupants in the same floor as Grace and Ronnie’s. The transfer has been smooth as the couple is being ushered into their new abode, with great help coming from their landlord Mark (Ryan Eigenmann). But things go bump in the dark, and Grace is plagued by visions and sounds that don’t quite exist on second sight. Gradually, a series of mishap characterize the fate of the building’s inhabitants: an explosion at the students’ room; a constantly bickering couple (Wendy Valdez and DJ Durano). Moreover, there’s a ghostly child named Yumi who vanishes just as quickly.

Furthermore, cataclysms seem to follow the couple. Ronnie develops a non-healing wound where worms crawl out of and Grace starts dreaming of being taken advantaged by Mark. Even job opportunities where Grace has already been accepted disappear (the employing officer dies). Are these things related to their present home? Lumen (LJ Moreno), the couple’s cousin, soon confirms this, albeit fatally so.

CONGESTED THOUGHTS

Early on, the story is congested with recurring scenes set to establish an atmosphere of dread: an off-kilter music that suddenly turns into loud bangs saunters along with visions of ashen faced children – peeping through doors, gazing from the foot of the stair, morbidly dipped under water in a tub, or gliding sideways behind their backs. How much mood do you need when you find this gimmick nauseatingly repeated 5 times in the first 20 minutes of the movie! Does it get scarier the more we repeat it? The element of surprise dissipates as quickly after the 5^th appearance-disappearance and this “contraption” becomes exhausting. You end up getting sensitized - and it isn't even half way through the whole movie.

Unfortunately, there are more derivative scenes you can easily identify from ten dozens of horror flicks: doors suddenly opening (this happens 4x or so); the protagonist waking up from a bothersome dream (this happens 3x); invisible creatures creeping under the bed; crawling hands moving under the blanket then sliding through the hair; ghouls posturing behind Cristine or Carlo like they are about to devour them, but when they look behind, there’s no one there. Yup, all of the above, with nauseating regularity.

Where is the T in T-junction?

At some point in the film, you realize Topel Lee is stuck in a narrative plateau. Yes, the director has an enviable cinematic eye. He creates images that reek with mood and an impending doom, but he has, of late, been victim to the “horror checklist”. He dutifully enumerates them in his cinematic pad, then peppers the whole story with “lots of it”. We are seeing him in an unflattering light. The realization becomes clear: Topel Lee is not a competent story teller. In this movie, he is completely at a loss. Desperately!

I once rationalized this suspicion and pointed the blame to mainstream film making because I have seen his “Dilim” (2005, with Mario Magallona and Rica Peralejo) and the “Ang Manunulat” segment of the omnibus project “ImaheNasyon”. These two films were progressive and entertaining works from Lee. But let’s check out his last 3 movies: the execrable “White House”, the vomit-inducing “Wapakman” (with Manny Pacquiao, and one of the worst films of the decade), and the uneven “Sundo” (with Robin Padilla and Sunshine Dizon). Clickthecity reviews have been kind to Mr. Lee, but after several movies, I just do not understand a statement like “…but he's capable of so much more.” More what? More of “My Kuya’s Wedding?” After making these last three films, Topel Lee has indeed shown what he is capable of doing. And this isn’t much!

Is there really an immense talent behind someone who shamelessly imitates Yam Laranas’ “ghosts in the tenement” tales? Are people really so forgetful of Laranas “Sigaw” (with Iza Calzado) and its American incarnation “The Echo” (Jesse Bradford and Iza Calzado)? Some of the characters in "Sigaw" included an abusive cop and his battered wife. Lee updates this in "Tumbok" with an abusive security guard and his wife (Durano and Valdez), which is a demotion since, heck, it’s just DJ Durano playing the part, and we don’t want to upstage Carlo Aquino who is the police department’s official photographer, do we? These “trapped characters” keep re-experiencing these events in vicious cycle. Wasn’t that the delectable conceit in Yam Laranas’ movie’s epilogue?

Even the details are indolent. When Ronnie bangs at the door of the rambunctious students to ask them to pipe down, they just ignore him. So he pulls his police badge out from somewhere under his shorts! When he visits a hospital to see his wife, he once again flashes his badge when all he needs to do is ask for the room number since he is the patient’s husband after all. His badge is glued somewhere in the recesses of his ass, and he's just too happy to flash them when he can.

Once again, we turn “medical”. In one scene, Aling Elsie (Malou de Guzman) points out, “Buntis ka? Ang lakas ng pintig ng leeg mo eh.” Distended neck veins are a sign of pregnancy? You better rush that girl to the hospital because such distention is synonymous with right-sided heart failure more than pregnancy. I have never heard of such hogwash! When Ronnie unfolds the bandage from his arm wound, he finds it throbbing and growing, with worms crawling out of a hole, yet we don’t exactly see him rushing to the doctor. He treats it like it's a pimple waiting to be squashed. Cash strapped maybe? “Naubos ang savings ko sa libing ni Lumen,” he reasons later.

Cristine Reyes is an engrossing presence, making this cycle of clichés a wee bit tolerable, and Carlo Aquino makes the most of his low-ranked police officer with an adumbral past. Unfortunately, pairing Reyes and Aquino together was like lighting a torch filled with water, instead of petrol. There isn’t any spark to speak of. Ara Mina and Jao Mapa’s cameos (a side story that supposedly explains Ronnie’s past) feel incongruent to the idea of "tumbok". After all, how can Ronnie forget everything about his origin? A coping mechanism to forget? Was he an amnesiac in the vein of Toni Gonzaga (“My Amnesia Girl”)? Ryan Eigenmann renders the flick some gravitas, but his incubus (a demon who descends upon people to have sexual intercourse with them in their sleep) feels too manipulated a character to be believed, a plot device that doesn't quite hold water. Are we still talking about “tumbok” (“poison arrow” in feng shui) here or is this a separate entity? The devil's child, perhaps? These fusion of ideas clutter around in confusion. But, hey, at least we have a lot of atmospheric shots, di ba?

Finally, just to lay out the concept of “tumbok” on the discussion table, check out our diagram of “tumbok” above (courtesy of www.cavitehomes.com) and compare this with the “other” entity called “Curved Knife” road. Then compare this with the building used in the movie (see the photo above). It hardly describes a “T-junction” to me, does it? Maybe they should have re-titled this one with something more appropriate. Like “Hilo”?

Bonamine, anyone?

Cristine Reyes - engrossing presence

Cristine Reyes

Cristine Reyes

Ryan Eigenmann - enough gravitas

LJ Moreno as Lumen discovers that Ronnie and Grace live right in the heart of superstition.

Working Girls 2010 - A Dizzying Parade of Little Women Stories

Thirty minutes into Jose Javier Reyes' updated version of the 80's Ishmael Bernal classic, "Working Girls", you find yourself catching your breath and tuning your senses to accommodate its myriad of characters. In fact, enumerating all the characters here for its synopsis is already a daunting task in itself. So I won't even try.

For some people, "Working Girls" is an emotional nostalgia - seeing the returning original cast in various side stories: Gina Pareno, Rio Locsin, the still-hilarious Carmi Martin, but where's Hilda Koronel?

Eugene Domingo fills her character Paula with her usual comedic schtick, and for the most part, she pulls this off with wanton verve. Her manic energy tends to go overboard at times, but this is pretty forgivable as she invariably takes you on intermittent laughing spells! Ruffa Gutierrez plays her Marilou Cobarrubias with the endearing modesty of a seemingly brain-dead ex-beauty queen. Gone are her annoying kolehiyala posturings (it's about time) evident in her previous works ("My Monster Mom" and "Desperadas"). She actually reveals moments of Anna Faris-brilliance in her small scenes (one was while reading the "annual report" of the company she acquired from her dead husband).

There are stark references to pop figures: Eula Valdez's Dr. Cleo Carillo is obviously patterned after Dr. Vicky Bello; Jackie Lou Blanco's Head of News and Current Affairs is ABS-CBN's tough chick, Maria Ressa; Mylene Dizon's acid queen-cum-TV host Connie Valderama is Korina Sanchez; Rafael Rossel's Atty. Rodney Camacho is a loose characterization of cute lawyer Adel Tamano (though I'm not aware of his clandestine womanizing activities); Jennilyn Mercado's single mother-cum-call center agent is culled after, well, Jennilyn Mercado minus her loopy moments as Jennilyn Mercado. LOL

Bianca King's Berkeley-bred Dara de la Vega storyline is a tad too predictable but the pretty Miss King does her struggling journalist well! And finally, Cristine Reyes is luminous as the bed-hopping model Wendy. It's a tailor-made role that perfectly suits her. One of the high points of this dizzying array of little stories is the bittersweet chapter on Paula's (Eugene Domingo) love triangle with her lazy husband Bobby (Antonio Aquitania) and car-for-rent guy Nelson (the amiable Ricky Davao). Several cameos include: Cherie Gil, Maria Isabel Lopez (as a Liza Maza-styled activist); Katya Santos as Wendy's girl friend; Andrea del Rosario as a bitchy news producer. There's Joel Lamangan, Biboy Ramirez, and Carlo Aquino too.

Finally, there is Iza Calzado who's once again brilliant as heartbroken nurse Teresa, although her scene with a cancer-stricken patient (the wife of her former boyfriend - played by Jao Mapa; the same boyfriend who dropped her like a hot potato) is a tad too sappy and malamya for my taste! In fact, the movie sags every time their portion plays.

Director Jose Javier Reyes has been doing these omnibus projects and he almost never meanders into mediocrity - except for "My Monster Mom" which was horrible. His last 2 projects - "Status Single" and "One Night Only" - had numerous characters that focused on the plight of contemporary women. Though "Working Girls 2010" is a bit too random and unfocused (too much stories to really invest your empathy), it still manages to draw insight (though a bit superficial) and entertainment from its audience.