Chito Rono's The Healing - The Sick, The Dying & The Doppelgangers

Like many people who get frustrated by the limitations of medical science, Seth (Vilma Santos), an insurance executive, takes her ailing 74 year old father (Robert Arevalo) to Manang Elsa (Daria Ramirez), a renowned faith healer. After some incantations, they were sent home with a medicinal concoction for her stroke patient. To her surprise, the next day finds the old man completely rid of stroke – strong, ambulatory and even virile! Tatang is given a new lease in life. And he starts living his days like they were his last. News travel fast. Soon, Seth’s house becomes an infirmary of sorts, with her circle of friends gathering and seeking her help for a coterie of complaints: a breast mass, diabetes, psoriasis, pediatric blindness, etc. Would Seth – pretty please – accompany them to Manang Elsa? Heck, even her ex-husband’s daughter Cookie (Kim Chiu) is afflicted with kidney disease, and she's gradually wasting away!

Seth takes her friends to the healer, but Manang Elsa refuses to see anyone. “May sakit s’ya at tumigil na s’ya sa panggagamot,” explains Melchor, Elsa’s son. They refuse to leave the shaman’s house. A lot is at stake: a medical clearance for work in the Middle East; an approaching wedding; a life free of cancer, etc. The old woman finally acquiesces and accommodates her assertive visitors. Everyone goes home hopeful, but few of them remain skeptical. One by one, Seth’s friends experience the miracle of healing - breast lumps disappear, gangrenous feet clear up, and blood sugar normalizes! Elsa was wrong, Ate Guy! “May himala”, indeed! Even Cookie’s blood dyscrasia and sallow skin clear up like magic! Everyone rejoices.

Then Seth starts seeing crows that appear incommodiously. She also sees doppelgangers of her friends; body doubles devoid of emotions. Then chatty Chona (Ces Quesada), who has always been good natured, turns amok. Is her strange demeanor related to the healing? Would it affect the other “patients” as well? Why is Seth’s father – the first to be treated – unaffected? 

The movie is an ensemble piece, held together beautifully by Vilma Santos though it’s easy to see it’s a walk in the park for the Star for All Seasons. It's a welcome respite to see Santos in a genre far removed from her bombastic dramas. I am a wee bit distracted by her “look” – she looked like our favorite Batangas Governor: thick rimmed glasses, corporate blouses, etc. I understand that she plays an insurance executive, but there has to be a difference between an insurance peddler and a governor, right? But I’m merely nitpicking. Santos is nevertheless a joy to watch.  

I am seeing Kim Chiu in a new light. This is a more adorable Chiu, devoid of her woe-is-me demeanor. She plays the sympathetic stepdaughter afflicted with Glomerulonephritis. Glomeru…what? It’s just a kidney infection, my tita said, who further shared, “We admit cases like that left and right. They’re easy to treat – like UTI - and could be managed as an out-patient case. So it’s weird hearing it as a fatal disease entity.” Sus, I thought it was analogous to a death sentence. J  But back to Kim, she was reasonably compelling. When she suddenly asked Seth, “Galit po kayo sa akin, Tita?” my heart went out to her. I wish Kim’s succeeding projects wouldn’t lay on the melodrama too thick, then I’d be happy to watch her again. In “The Healing”, Kim Chiu eschews an adequately fleshed out character.

SPOILER ALERT!

The rest of the cast should be proud as well. Martin del Rosario (Seth’s son and Cookie’s half-brother Jed) displays a strong cinematic presence that should guarantee him more screen work in the future. Other note-worthy portrayals include Janice de Belen as mother Cita, Joel Torre as Melchor (the healer’s son), Daria Ramirez as Elsa (the faith healer), Robert Arevalo (Seth’s father), Mark Gil (Seth’s former husband), and Pokwang (as Dubai-bound Alma). I am conflicted with Jhong Hilario’s participartion: his wig looked nasty (and fake). Dario, his character, got electrocuted. When he was taken to Manang Elsa, he was already dead. The healer went on to resurrect the dead which should be a taboo, for obvious reasons. And such action necessitates the claiming of another in exchange of Dario’s. Quite a valid scenario, if you ask me.

DOPPELGANGERS

In folklore, doppelganger – the paranormal double of a living person – typically represents misfortune or evil. These entities are a form capable of “bilocation” (St. Pio de Pietrelcina was said to have had such power), but in this light, they are harbingers of bad luck, and may portend illness or an accident. It can be an omen of death. The idea of doppelgangers exists even in Norse and Finnish mythology as well as in the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians. A popular poet, Percy Bysshe Shelly told his wife how he met his doppelganger. Few days later, the English poet drowned in a bay in Italy. Other historical persons who died after meeting their doppelgangers include Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. It is interesting therefore to encounter the Pinoy perspective on doppelgangers, violent creatures in Rono’s re-imaginings.  

One of my favorite scenes involves the monks at a Buddhist Temple. Since this scene is not exactly commonplace, the praying monks imbue it with a sense of mystery. Rono is quite good with employing local color that, as an audience, it’s easy to immerse oneself in the make-believe world we are witnessing. 

Director Chito Rono has created a feasible scenario that hooks his viewers from the start. After all, we have a rich and inherent tradition of interweaving faith, superstition and medical science. But what makes “The Healing” unsettling is its distinct plethora of events: patient gets healed; crows loom; doppelgangers appear; the patients crack up and go berserk, then turn amok.

In the narrative, chronology of events takes center stage to exploit paranoia and a rankling of supposition, not dissimilar to the “Final Destination” movies. Who follows whom? How will they perish? And Rono concocts this atmosphere of morbidity with inspired compulsion and rabid vehemence. When Ynes Veneracion leisurely saunters towards the concrete with a giant chopping knife while her husband (Allan Paule) stoops down at the center of the road, you want to hit a pause button. There was a chill running down my spine. You know what’s coming – and you watch in frustration until the deed has been consummated! Rono keeps his narrative clamorous all throughout.   

 “The Healing” is experiencing a slow burn – “a fuego lento”. In fact, it is doing an amazing business in its second week. In three different mall cinemas this weekend alone, I saw queues mostly meant for “The Healing”. This is good news for mainstream cinema that has suffered a considerable plunge in theater attendance from January to June 2012. Word of mouth sure works like magic.    

A Mother's Story - Accountable Tragedies

The Filipino migrant worker has embraced the concept of 3D jobs, an American neologism that refers to “Dirty, Dangerous and Demeaning”. These jobs bring higher wages due to a shortage of willing qualified workers. Such employments engage in high risk, low status works. What’s baffling, some of these people aren’t even paid all that well.

Medy Santos (Pokwang) is desperately coming up for air. Her dubiously invalid husband Gerry (Noni Buencamino) refuses to work, and has turned to gambling; even their utility budget gets usurped. When Medy gives birth to her second child, she only had herself to turn to. Moreover, her mother (Daria Ramirez) constantly nags her to find a job abroad. The road to riches is nowhere found on local shores. When an actress offers Medy the chance to work with her for her 10-day U.S. tour, she reluctantly grabs the opportunity and leaves the care of her children to her mother and best friend (Ana Capri).

One serendipitous day, she meets Helen (Beth Tamayo), her erstwhile childhood best friend who has left a daughter in Manila, but has since remarried to an elderly American. She tries convincing Medy to stay and find her fortune there, at the risk of earning an illegal status. The day before her flight back to Manila, Medy gets a distressed call from Gerry. Queenie (Xyriel Manabat), her youngest, was rushed to the hospital and she had to send money – fast! It wasn’t even considered that she was coming home the next day.

En route to the airport, Medy is circumspect – and swiftly detours away. She decides to stay. After all, coming home seems like a dead-end option for dearth. And her children need to feed, go to school, see doctors. With Helen’s help, Medy takes odd jobs helping out at a children’s class. But as days pass, it becomes clear that illegal immigrants enjoy paltry rights, thus couldn’t earn more than they should. Helen offers her a better paying job (try $800) – that of a live-in house keeper in a household of a constantly squabbling lawyer couple. What’s worse, they take her passport and throw her in an otherwise nonhabitable room. She isn’t allowed to leave the premises except the occasional foray outside to put out the garbage.

For the next couple of years, Medy lives her miserable days oppressed and mistreated. Her only link to the world outside is Helen who runs errands for her, sending money to Medy’s family and dropping her Balikbayan boxes. But Medy gradually unearths a ruse: Helen receives a considerable percentage of the money she earns. With hands mashed by manual labor and a crumbling soul, Medy – with the help of her employer’s daughter – finds the courage to escape. Will Medy succeed?

Medy’s story is a cautionary tale of courage and perseverance, and it’s obvious that this will resonate loudly among Filipinos whose fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters work overseas. But this tale of heartbreaking quandary is showing interminable urgency. We’ve lived with this for three decades and we’ve grown accustomed to such humdrum tragedy. The plot gets more tiresome when Medy – after seven years – finds her way home. Suddenly, the mouths she’s been feeding turn against her. She’s suddenly the neglectful mother to her idiotic son King (Rayver Cruz). Her sickly daughter (Manabat) doesn’t know her. Her mother just stares with woeful I-told-you-so’s when she complains of her children’s apparent alienation (“Pitong taon kang nawala.”). Gerry, her husband, wouldn’t even meet her at the airport.

Though there is a degree of diversion in Medy’s story, you couldn’t help shake the excessive complot to weave a story as deplorable, almost disconsolate – nothing short of calamitous – as Medy’s. Many of the characters are caricatures and cardboard depictions – like Medy’s American employers, husband Gerry, Medy’s son King, et.al. – you are somehow taken to the world of Walt Disney where anti-heroes look like villains, growl like devils and move with sinister deportment. Such is the failure of this narrative, where black is black and white is white. Life, if you’ve noticed, has gray hues in between, and blotches of colors and shades. This is why Beth Tamayo’s performance lends a degree of inscrutability for this cinematic vehicle. Tamayo tempers her underwritten part with due restraint; it’s hard to peg her as friend or foe. Like most people, Tamayo shows reflections of humanity – actions guided by motives, yet there’s also the inherent goodness grappling with moral dilemmas (she has gambling problems; her marriage is falling apart; she needs to send money for her daughter back home). Tamayo luminously shines in 2012’s first local release!

Pokwang tries hard as Medy, and it’s easy to empathize with someone who has experienced the hardships of being a migrant worker. She has probably endured more than Medy (didn’t she lose a daughter while working in Japan?) Unfortunately, Pokwang peppers her performance with sprinkles of humor which don’t quite make the grade. (“Aatend ng kombulsyon sa Amerika.”) It was an artistic choice to lighten what’s a decidedly sappy narrative, but such moments feel displaced. The more glaring realization is that we’re watching Pokwang play herself. That isn’t so bad, but not all that good either.

It’s hard not to challenge some illogical choices in director John-D Lazatin's narrative. King, the character played by Rayver Cruz, Medy’s eldest child, is particularly perturbing. If he was indeed intelligent as the story has him, wasn’t it ever an issue that his father was merely posturing as an invalid? Was Gerry sitting in a wheelchair? Yes, he limped, but that never stopped people from finding work. Heck, people with greater physical disabilities – polio victims, amputees – even become lawyers and doctors. Wasn’t it crystal that if there were one negligent parent; it would readily single out the patriarch who refused to seek work? And wasn’t it the grandmother’s métier to educate her grandchildren why their mother chose to stay away? Or was she merely happy to receive her monthly stipend? She was the moving force behind her daughter’s migration. These were obvious lapses in the story. You may drop a tear or two, but at the back of your mind, you knew you’re riding the perfunctory mechanics of melodrama. And it helps that Dodgie Simon penned such a heart breaking melody in Carol Banawa’s “Sakaling Malimutan Ka”.

Life sometimes reeks of tragedy, and we’re accountable for half of it.

Helen and Medy



Employers from hell



Mother and daughter share light moments



Son King blames mother Medy

Presa - Grazing the Surface

Sir Roger L’Estrange, an English writer, once wrote, “That which the world miscalls a jail, a private closet is to me. “

CAPSULE

In Adolf Alix’s “Presa”, a group of women endure each other inside a correctional facility, each one carrying a burden in their private closets. There’s the zealous Baby (Jodi Sta. Maria) who’s nimble enough to sell anything inside the penitentiary to support her family outside. Nanay Idad (Perla Bautista) is silently grieving over the death of a woman who denied her romantic advances. Dolly (Tetchie Agbayani) refuses to utter a word, until she accidentally slips in the pool. Carmen (Daria Ramirez) is eagerly waiting for her impending release with her husband. Sylvia (Liza Lorena), the cellblock’s tough talking, abusive inmate makes slaves out of Nita (Angeli Bayani) and Rose (Ina Feleo) who diligently follow her around like paid servants. But it’s really Cion (Anita Linda) whose story gets the most screen time. Otherwise known as the Famas Award-winning veteran Esmeralda Cortez, 85 year old Cion got snagged during a buy-bust operation. She is enthusiastically waiting for a presidential pardon that his lawyer has been cooking up for the last year or so. Moreover, she’s antsy, if excited, at the prospect of shooting a film with popular actress Lian (Alessandra De Rossi), a move that might spell her rightful comeback to the Silver Screen. Meanwhile, Ampi (Rosanna Roces), Cion’s loyal fan and a former police woman, religiously attends to Cion’s needs.

INFLUENCE

This great assemblage of thespians can’t help but cook up a significant amount of excitement among lovers of local cinema. It isn’t everyday these respectable names come together for an omnibus project. This significantly underlines director Adolf Alix’s burgeoning influence in the industry.

TELLING A STORY

Unfortunately, such multifarious casting comes at the cost of telling a legible story. In fact, you end up leaving the theater unsatisfied, albeit with a paltry subject for discussion among your friends. Why was Baby working so hard? Why did Dolly pretend to be a mute? Why didn’t war-freak Idad contest the supremacy of Sylvia where there should be redundancy of characters? The list is long, but they are nothing worth pontificating over because their stories were inadequately fleshed out. If this was a critique on the ability of the actors, I’d say the script writer needed a dash of inspired imagination to actually “internalize” his characters, to give them enough flesh and soul. But when you’re just grazing over the surface, all you get is the superficial matter, instead of the “salt of the earth” so to speak.

TOP-NOTCH PERFORMANCES

The performances are undeniably topnotch with Anita Linda’s Cion taking a big slice of the cake, simply because her story was fuller than the rest. Perla Bautista displays enviable skill in a part that has bypassed her all these years. Jodi Sta. Maria adequately fills out a character that instructs on subtlety and panache on emotive control. Rosanna Roces lights up the screen with understated charm. Roces has never looked this beautiful and svelte in years. In fact, in Alix’s “Karera” shown last December, she was uncomfortably robust. Roces can easily put the current crop of actresses to shame.

MISPLACED ACTRESS

It’s actually the younger part of the ensemble I’m having trouble with: Ina Feleo is a misplaced soul as the vengeful Rose who killed her abusive employer. Though she understates her performance – with palpable unease, it’s the maudlin scenes that show her relative inexperience. While the inmates were enjoying a day at the pool, the camera pans at Feleo as she eats and drinks from their “baon”. For a maid who’s supposedly used to roughing it up, she was dainty. Her fingers graciously opening a bottled water, then carefully scooping a spoonful to eat. Absolutely something that a maid isn’t! Ina Feleo may be schooled in expressing emotions. She gets this in her silent moment where she doesn’t utter a line. You don’t always get two terrific parent actors, do you? Unfortunately, it’s the physical component of acting she’s sorely wanting. As an actor, you have to move the part, transform yourself into the gait of your character. Facial expression doesn’t suffice! After all, you are a maid who killed the employer who didn’t feed you enough. You can’t be persnickety like any fairy tale princess! Her mother, Laurice Guillen, suffered the same fate in the latter’s “Karera”. More acting workshops, perhaps?

AFTERTHOUGHT

It’s such a delight that we witness this gathering of talent on screen, but it could have been a more fulfilling experience for us if there were a single story that actually made us care. But when such snippets of stories feel nothing more like an afterthought, then you are left with something that’s essentially inconsequential. And that is sad!

PUBLIC DECEPTION & HYPOCRISY THE MMDA WAY

Finally, I am disgusted with the organizers of the MMFF Committee – the MMDA – who proudly announced that 5 Independently-produced movies made it to the last Metro Manila Film Festival. As it turned out, these 5 titles weren’t even offered to the public for commercial screening last December! How these films became part of MMFF when they were only seen by the MMFF Screening Committee and their makers is a mystery of gargantuan proportions to me! I would call such move “deceitful” just to impart a veneer of “new birth” and “respectability” to the latest line of MMFF entries. Their spectacular “show” effectively made “jokes” out of the 5 indies (“Presa” included) who probably expected even a single day of commercial exhibition – which ended with “no day”! It was all for show! Shame on you, Atty. Francis Tolentino (MMDA Chair).

QUALITY DECLINE

That Butch Francisco’s taste for cinema is reflected in his championing “Presa” as a Best Picture-caliber work – and Marian Rivera a Best Actress-caliber actress for a stupid role (“Super Inday and the Magic Bibe”) – is a reflection of the slow-but-sure depreciation of the quality of names winning from the next Urian Awards, a body of critics I used to hold in high regard. Now I know better!

Mahilig - Sex, Drugs and Lousy Cinema

Just when you thought we're safe from the influx of those B-movie girlie erotica that used to thrive in 2nd rate cinemas in the late 80's and 90's, we were surprised to find director Mike Angelo Salvador's (posters use a shorter name: Nico Salvador) "Mahilig" at a major cinema!

The movie is made up of 2 incongruent stories weaved into one. The first is that of Thea Alvarez's ("Libido") character who's the sex nymphet who couldn't shake drugs off her system, thus when her hard working, albeit sex-starved husband (Mon Lacsamana) finds out that old habits indeed die hard, he leaves her. This sends Thea deeper into the quagmire of her addiction. The second narrative strain is that of Carlo Aquino's character; an impressionable high school student who comes from an ordinary, but loving family. His father's a good natured postman (Dante Rivero) while mother (Daria Ramirez) is a typical homemaker. Enter Nico (Onemig Bondoc) who would lure saintly Nico to the realm of vices: from smoking, to alcohol, then drugs. The latter would eventually tie down these 2 disparate stories together.

There really isn't much to critique in Salvador's work as there's not a hint of brilliance on show here. Much of the performance is obsequious to what is required from the character sketches on view. And it is a little bewildering how this film is able to get the services of actors like Carlo Aquino, Dante Rivero and Daria Ramirez. You can probably surmise "desperation" - or a good payday, but then again, it can be how the story was pitched prior to production: "It's a cautionary tale about how drugs can consume a person (Thea Alvarez) and destroy families (Carlo Aquino)." Looks good on paper, doesn't it?

An adequate film making skill is needed for this! But whatever little talent is shown here turns into nothing but vacuous craftsmanship. Even the intentions are suspect at best. In fact, the first scenes involving Thea Alvarez (with her protruding belly, she would take a full-frontal 3 minute shower) would already clue you in! I somehow felt I was in the wrong theater! I pinched myself; maybe I was in some dingy Quiapo cinema watching reruns of films starring Aya Medel, Sabrina M, Vida Verde or Lala Montelibano. Alvarez's confrontation with Mon Lacsamana happens right after they had a sweaty roll in the hay! How convenient, right?

What's almost ridiculous to bear is the resolute cameos of Gen. Rodolfo Caisip and Asec Rommel Garcia (PDEA deputy director and Dangerous Drugs Board honcho, respectively). It's one thing to advocate anti-drug sentiments, but when you're endorsing it within a salacious softcore film, any assumptions of good intent is lost!

Thea Alvarez and Mon Lacsamana

Desperation becomes Carlo Aquino.

Mon Lacsamana disrobes away from his singing group "D Pardz".