Canon Decampment: Ishmael Bernal

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Pagdating sa Dulo

English Title: Reaching the Top
Year of Release: 1971 / B&W
Director & Screenwriter: Ishmael Bernal
Producers: Mever Films & Frankesa Films

Cast: Rita Gomez, Vic Vargas, Eddie Garcia, Rosemarie Gil, Ronaldo Valdez, Elvira Manahan, Zeneida Amador, Rosemarie Gil, Subas Herrero, Joonee Gamboa, Ernie Zarate, Ellen Esguerra

Driven by great financial need, Ruben, a filmmaker, reluctantly agrees to helm a bomba or soft-core sex movie and launches nightclub dancer Ching as leading lady. To ensure that no one discovers her background, Ching creates a fake backstory and assumes a new name. She then convinces her former lover Pinggoy to enter showbiz too. But the dangerous allure of celebrity life soon triggers Ching and Pinggoy’s downward spiral.

Having returned from higher studies in film and literature in India and France respectively, Ishmael Bernal may have picked up a cosmopolitan sensibility that accommodated both European and native values. Flaunting this same sensibility before media practitioners were convinced that it could work in “low” cultural exercises, he risked getting fired from his first film project—Luis Enriquez’s Ah Ewan! Basta sa Maynila Pa rin Ako! (I Don’t Care! I Still Prefer Manila!, 1970)—and needed to get together a team of investors just to be able to finance his own low-budget debut. Pagdating sa Dulo proceeds from the English-language pun of a taxi driver falling in with a taxi dancer, then ventures into the tragicomic world of showbiz sexploitation. Bernal’s subject, for the most part of his career, had been the fallen Pinay; though one could sense the tension between his highly schooled training and his enthusiastic acceptance of mass culture, his sense of literary proportion and critical perspective on social issues provide heft to potentially lightweight material, and his propensity for satire spices it up.

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Lumapit … Lumayo ang Umaga

English Translation: The Morning Arrived … and Left
English Title: Near, Far the Morning
Year of Release: 1975
Director & Screenwriter: Ishmael Bernal
Based on the story by Liwayway Arceo
Producer: Lea Productions

Cast: Dante Rivero, Elizabeth Oropesa, George Estregan, Anita Linda, Caridad Sanchez, Renato Robles, Estrella Kuenzler

Innocent about the ways of men because of having grown up fatherless, Amy falls for a handsome stranger who keeps showing up at the market stall where she works as a fish vendor. She and Vic start a family after her mother dies, but Vic’s criminal past catches up with him and he has to take leave of his family on the pretext that he has to work in Mindanao. After an absence of over seven years where neither Amy nor her friends can track him, William, the Chinoy owner of the shop where Amy works, offers her marriage even after finding out that she has a son by another man. The new family have a prosperous and contented existence, until Vic returns to reclaim the family he left.

Ishmael Bernal continued working for Lea Productions long after Lino Brocka cut off ties with the studio. Evaluators unthinkingly downgraded Bernal’s 1975 studio entry in favor of Brocka’s independently produced Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag. As it turned out, Lumapit … Lumayo ang Umaga outshines all the other available Lea films (except possibly for a now-lost 1967 title, Armando de Guzman’s Maruja). Understandably, Brocka’s abhorrence of compromise garnered better notices—and more trophies—than the delicate balance between popular appeal and the sober dissection of social relations in Ishma’s attempt. Elizabeth Oropesa’s performance, a first in Filipino film naturalism, exemplifies the manner in which a typical everyday provincial-accented Pinay strives to acquire wisdom and sophistication in accordance with her rise in social status. In final contrast with Maynila, the film acknowledges how a Chinoy may fall for a native lass but without necessarily turning monstrous out of lust. The film may have definitely benefited from a period in Bernal’s career before he turned too arch and satirical for his own good, but Brocka may have also been taking notes, as his own personal aesthetic development eventually circled back to this very same set of filmmaking values.

Ligaw na Bulaklak

English Title: Wildflower
Year of Release: 1976
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriter: Edgardo Reyes
From his novel titled Bulaklak ng Apoy [Flower of Fire]
Producer: Crown Seven Film Productions

Cast: Vic Silayan, Marissa Delgado, Yvonne, Charina Alonzo, Anita Linda, Jun Mariano, Alma Moreno, Elvie Escarro, Edgar Garcia, Ria

Abandoned as a child, Evelyn is raised in a working-class kabaret (taxi-dance hall) by its proprietor and manager; like everyone else, Evelyn calls her Mommy, although she happens to be Evelyn’s godmother. Although delayed in her studies, Evelyn finishes her elementary education in their town’s public school, where the principal insists on civic propriety for her entire constituency. Mang Juan, the school gardener, lives on the premises and takes a fatherly interest in the young woman. When Mommy drives her away for using her jewelry for her graduation ceremony, Evelyn winds up sharing Mang Juan’s on-campus living quarters. And when the principal’s promiscuous son visits his mother during vacation, he too is drawn to Evelyn’s pubescent charms.

One of the mysteries in a close tracking of Ishmael Bernal’s career trajectory is how he could come up with such an impressively edgy depiction of Philippine rural existence—then abandon the approach in his future major film projects; for all their merits, Nunal sa Tubig (1976) and Himala (1982) both assumed the perspectives of outsiders looking in. Bernal was such a creature, after all, but Ligaw na Bulaklak possessed sufficient urban resonances with, say, an earlier period when Manila residents were more naïve and easy-going. His familiarity with that type of milieu can be perceived in how he managed to sneak in a critique of authoritarian developmentalist policies in what is essentially a psychosexual study of desire and how, unbridled, it easily transmutes into a destructive force. Most observers focused on the interaction among randy stud, willing nymphet, and repressed senior disabled worker, but the truly powerful figures in their narrative situations are the ones who drive the increasingly malevolent succession of events: the whorehouse madame whose unflinching honesty enables her to assess the readiness of her hapless ward for sex work, and the upstanding school principal whose hypocrisy dictates that she police her students’ and employees’ moral behavior even while she maintains a paramour on the downlow. The bleakly lurid future that the town faces will hold no glad tidings for the triangle at the story’s center, but these two opposing forces will likely be able to move on from what will be for them just one of many possible setbacks.

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Nunal sa Tubig

English Translation: Mole on the Water
English Title: A Speck in the Water
Year of Release: 1976
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriter: Jorge Arago
Producer: Crown Seven Film Productions

Cast: Elizabeth Oropesa, Daria Ramirez, George Estregan, Ruben Rustia, Pedro Faustino, Nenita Jana, Ven Medina, Leticia de Guzman, Tita de Villa, Ella Luansing, Rustica Carpio, Paquito Salcedo, Lem Garcellano, Carlos Padilla Jr., Tony Carreon

Benjamin shares his affection between island natives Chedeng, who is a midwife, and Chedeng’s friend Maria. Chedeng decides to practice her profession in a nearby town and leaves the island. Benjamin also leaves so he can join the navy, but only after he gets Maria pregnant. Upon Chedeng’s return, her relationships with her lover and her friend require some drastic adjustments.

Ishmael Bernal’s friendly rivalry with Lino Brocka resulted in a productive series of projects for both of them, although Brocka’s flashier attempts tended to outshine Bernal’s. Nevertheless, after his debut in 1971, Bernal managed a more consistent level of quality from one project to the next, in contrast with Brocka’s uneven output. Nunal sa Tubig typifies Bernal’s predicament: a writerly obsession with abstract issues pertaining to material and medium, so that the result yields insights over time rather than make a strong first impact. This also explains why Bernal tended to utilize exploitative strategies, specifically raunchy language and scenes of sexual coupling, in addition to his offbeat humor. In this specific outing, which was set in a fishing village too far away from his deep-urban comfort zone, he appears to have had no other choice except to fall back on his extensive documentarian training. So startlingly well-observed it could trump most real-life footage from the same period, Nunal was nevertheless genuinely “bold” (the then-current term for sexually frank cinema) in depicting its trio of characters’ awakening to erotic desire. It was also forward-looking in terms of the ecological effects of development and empathetic regarding the plight of rural labor. If the viewing experience, as affirmed by agitated mass audiences during the movie’s initial release, turned out to be occasionally tedious, the long-term rewards will be worth every effort.

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Nonoy Marcelo’s Tisoy!

Alternate Title: Tisoy!
Year of Release: 1977
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriter: Nonoy Marcelo
From the comics strip originally featured in Manila Times
Producer: NV Productions

Cast: Christopher de Leon, Jay Ilagan, Lorli Villanueva, Bert “Tawa” Marcelo, Ruffy Mendoza, Dexter Doria, Soxy Topacio, Pongay, Jun Morales, Moody Diaz, Nora Aunor, Dranreb Belleza, Feling Cudia, Marianne de la Riva, Johnny Delgado, Angie Ferro, Ernie Garcia, Sandy Garcia, Trixia Gomez, Hilda Koronel, Edgar Mortiz, Orestes Ojeda, Elizabeth Oropesa, Rolly Quizon, Bembol Roco

Preceded by Tikyo, who loads his companion in an ambulance, Tisoy arrives with Clip from the US and is met by his rich friend Boy. He seeks out Maribubut, the girlfriend he left behind, who resents him for not keeping in touch. Tisoy explains that he left to find his American father, but returned because he heard that his father traveled to Pinas. They round up their old friends Pomposa, a compulsive eater, and Gemmo, an artist who’s not beneath swiping someone else’s commission so he can earn extra. Clip meanwhile visits his mother Aling Otik, who still lives atop the Intramuros wall but also joined Imelda Marcos’s crew of street sweepers, the Metro Manila Aides. They see Tikyo at his campaign sortie for barangay captain, but he knows nothing about Tisoy’s father. The wander around Manila’s scenic areas and nightspots to help Tisoy’s mission, while Tikyo amuses his American friend by trading puns in various global languages.

Tisoy! is an illustrious undertaking involving the best film talents working at peak capacity, from Ishma Bernal to a more-than-game cast, plus Nora Aunor in her less-appreciated function as film producer. Its source material was from the country’s top comics artist, Nonoy Marcelo, although ultimately its weakness will have to be tracked to the team deciding (unusual for Bernal) to take his script at face value. The director and performers deliver a procession of puns, witticisms, in-jokes, foreshadowings, and reflexive references with a zippy energy that might prove too fast even for contemporary viewers, and manage to slip in a few satirical barbs that the martial-law censors decided were unacceptable enough to cause the film to be unavailable for the rest of the fascist dispensation (typical example: before cast members danced to Festival’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” in a disco in Manila by Night, “Pamulinawen” gets played here on the way to Pangasinan, whence the friends stage a beauty contest where Pomposa mouths the First Lady’s tourism bromides).[1] Most of these elements were of course ascribable to Marcelo, although the overriding quest of a son seeking to reunite with his father, plus the revelation of who said father might be, would be obvious to any Disney-raised preteen. The measure of how impressively the film prevailed can be seen in how, a few years later, most of the same cast was reassembled for Mike de Leon’s Kakabakaba Ka Ba? (Are You Nervous? 1980), but could barely recapture the spirit of loony inspiration that marked their presence in Tisoy!

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Ikaw Ay Akin

English Translation: You Are Mine
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1978
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriters: Ishmael Bernal & Jose N. Carreon
Producer: Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions

Cast: Nora Aunor, Vilma Santos, Christopher de Leon, Nick Romano, Ellen Esguerra, Zandro Zamora, Odette Khan, Ven Medina, Ernie Zarate, Anton Juan

Jeepney manufacturing company executive Rex and orchid cultivator Teresita have been lovers for five years. But when Rex meets artist-designer Sandra, sparks fly and an affair ensues. When Teresita discovers this, Rex has to decide which woman he truly wants to be with in his life.

With the qualified success of Nunal sa Tubig (1976) and the impressive mark made by Ikaw Ay Akin, Bernal started being called a “poet of the middle class”—a description that never caught on, fortunately. In fact, a careful inspection of the present film would demonstrate that his insider status becomes evident only once, in a highly proscribed milieu, one that used to be called “bohemian.” His decision to aestheticize the middle-class situation leads to similar-yet-different results as with the rural village in Nunal; for one thing, the man caught between two equally desirable women, played by long-time friends and rivals Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos, this time endeavors to articulate his dilemma to each one of them, instead of running away. And while it may be true that Filipinos, Pinays included, rarely engage in moments of silence, Bernal’s approach—highlighted in the dialogue-less confrontation that serves as the film’s closure—provides a certain weight that any native who has experienced any kind of tongue-tying befuddlement will recognize.

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Salawahan

English Translation: Fickle-Hearted
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1979
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriter: Jose N. Carreon
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Jay Ilagan, Mat Ranillo III, Sandy Andolong, Rio Locsin, Rita Gomez, Mark Gil, Ruthie Roces, Rene Requiestas, Bongchi Miraflor

Cousins Manny and Gerry always seem to strike out when it comes to love. Manny is a playboy and easily gets into trouble with his many girlfriends. Gerry values monogamy but takes too long before he makes his move. When they agree to switch dating styles to see where it takes them, a myriad of comic misadventures ensues, involving their respective girlfriends as well as Marianne, an elderly sex researcher.

Ishmael Bernal had been interrogating middle-class lifestyles for so long—from early in his career with Daluyong! (Storm Surge!) (1971) up to as recently as 1978’s Ikaw Ay Akin—that when he provided the equivalent of a mid-career summation, only his mass audience took note. Yet Salawahan stands as tall as anything since 1976 to the end of the decade, and has aged better than any title in, say, its year of release, which saw Lino Brocka’s Jaguar being the toast of local awards groups and the Cannes Film Festival. To be sure, Salawahan’s comic façade, which enabled it as well as several other Bernal films around this time to sneak past the militarized board of censors, undoubtedly resulted in mainstream critics downgrading its worth. Perversely, the same body would occasionally ban harmless entries for no perceivable reason except to keep practitioners on the alert—so in retrospect, Salawahan was more daring than people had presumed. Also, a minor to-do among critical observers over who delivered the year’s best male performance—i.e., Dindo Fernando in Danny L. Zialcita’s Ikaw at ang Gabi (You and the Night) vs. Phillip Salvador in Jaguar—would have been easily averted if everyone had paid closer attention then to Jay Ilagan.

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Aliw

English Title: Pleasure
Additional Languages: Japanese, English, Spanish
Year of Release: 1979
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriter: Cecille Lardizabal[2]
Producer: Seven Star Productions

Cast: Lorna Tolentino, Amy Austria, Suzette Ranillo, Butz Aquino, George Estregan, Jojo Santiago, Rustica Carpio, Manny Castañeda, Laura Danao, Menggie Cobarrubias, Dick Israel, Ruby Regala, Ruthie Roces, Juan Rodrigo, Cesar Topacio, Junix Inocian, Edmund Farolan, Antonette Bass

Ayet, Lingling, and Esper are nightclub hostesses dealing with a bevy of problems. Ayet is torn between easy money and true love. Lingling keeps ending up with men who stifle her independence. Esper struggles to support a family (her own and her mother’s) while maintaining a relationship with a married man, with whom she raises their love child. As they deal with issues of money, addiction, professional rivalry, abusive lovers, and social prejudice, they find that their pursuit of personal happiness will constantly have to be deferred.

One would expect that critics would have given Ishmael Bernal, with all his extensive academic and practical training in film, the benefit of the doubt when he turned to low-end aesthetic strategies. Unfortunately the type of US film-studies influence that first arrived here must have come from directly across the Pacific, with Hollywood the locus of application. Otherwise, with Aliw on hand, observers should not have been too surprised when its expanded version, Manila by Night (1980), emerged right afterward. The conceptual and creative intelligence that went into the seemingly casual outing that was Aliw, distinguishes it as the first successful instance of a multicharacter film narrative—i.e., one where the number of lead performers exceeds the standard singular or dual (hero/antihero) arrangement. After the box-office trauma of Nunal sa Tubig (1976, financed by the same producer as Aliw), Bernal’s sharpened sense of commercial contingency enabled the movie to market itself as part of an unnamed subgenre of local melodrama. In retrospect, and with a nod to Korean film scholars, we may now refer to these types of movies as the “tragic-hostess” films, where the socio-economic conditions underlying women’s sex work are exposed, as a way of implicating patriarchy and martial rule. Apart from its innovative storyline, Aliw endows its material with a mix of pathos, humor, insight, and accuracy, automatically rendering less consequential all other films in its league.

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Manila by Night

Censors-Approved Title: City after Dark
Additional Languages: Hiligaynon, English, Chinese, Japanese
Year of Release: 1980
Director & Screenwriter: Ishmael Bernal
Script consultants: Jorge Arago, Toto Belano, Jose Carreon, Ricky Lee, Peque Gallaga, George Sison
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Charito Solis, Alma Moreno, Lorna Tolentino, Rio Locsin, Cherie Gil, Gina Alajar, Orestes Ojeda, William Martinez, Bernardo Bernardo, Maya Valdes, Johnny Wilson, Jojo Santiago, Aida Carmona, Sharon Manabat, Lucy Quinto, Abbo de la Cruz, Dante Castro, Dennis Marasigan, Tony Angeles

Drug-addicted nightclub singer Alex employs the services of blind masseuse Bea. She, in turn, is the object of affection of lesbian drug pusher Kano. Meanwhile, playboy taxi driver Febrero juggles affairs with naïve waitress Baby, night nurse Adelina, and gay couturier Manay Sharon, who also eventually manages to pick up Alex. Manay is persuaded by Alex to help Bea by soliciting the help of Adelina. As these interactions among them and with their families and friends grow more complex, each person is led to a path where the line between salvation and doom becomes harder to perceive.

The Filipino entry that towers over everything else made by Ishmael Bernal and, by extension, the rest of Philippine cinema. The storytelling element alone (over a dozen lead characters) already invites comparison to few other examples in global film, and Bernal’s refusal to provide closure raises the possibility of its singularity among existing multicharacter film texts. Too easily taken for granted is a further accomplishment, one that eluded even Bernal himself in most of his future attempts at implementing the format: the successful depiction of dramatic themes drawn not from any (anti-)hero in the narrative, but from the equal-emphasis interaction of all the major characters. As a consequence, the city of Manila emerges as an ultimate abstract super-character, ensnaring everyone in its seductive web of deceit and desperation. Once more, critics were (and still are?) misled by Bernal’s reliance on Third-World aesthetics, where the proliferation of misery onscreen ironically heralds a richness of conception and unconditional sympathy for a wide range of social misfits and rejects.

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Pabling

English Translation: Playboy
Year of Release: 1981
Director & Screenwriter: Ishmael Bernal
Unofficially adapted from Ah Ewan! Basta sa Maynila Pa rin Ako! (dir. Luis Enriquez, 1970)
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: William Martinez, Maricel Soriano, Gina Alajar, Joel Alano, Alfie Anido, Michael de Mesa, Subas Herrero, Jay Ilagan, Alma Moreno, Balot, Jimi Melendez, Al Tantay, Chanda Romero, Bernardo Bernardo

Suave playboy Berto and sassy charmer Maya leave their rural town in search of greener pastures in Manila. Once there, some shared misfortunes help them to strike a friendship that slowly leads to love. As they take up several odd jobs, Berto gets into all sorts of high jinks with various women and eventually loses contact with Maya. Eventually, however, their paths cross again as their fortunes change.

Even when Ishmael Bernal took a much-deserved breather from his visionary contributions to Philippine cinema, he could not help his newfound innovative bent. Hitting upon an update of Luis Enriquez’s Ah Ewan! Basta sa Maynila Pa rin Ako! (1970), his first script project and would-have-been directorial debut, he imbued the picaresque narrative with situations from and references to his own and his colleagues’ popular films. In addition, he opted to surrealize as well as satirize the absurdity of the triteness of the situation. And just as 1980’s Manila by Night was his ethnographic answer to the excessive romanticism and unexamined stereotyping of Lino Brocka’s Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1975), so was Pabling a playful reversal of many of Maynila’s narratory obsessions. It commences with a rural couple’s migration to the big city and realizes a central twist in the girlfriend managing to survive—and exploiting her lover in the process. In the end, social and emotional developments generically conspire to restore a semblance of the normative, a criticism that attended all of the major Bernal movies up to this point. However, as in the aforementioned films, it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters.

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1—Relasyon

English Translation: Relationship
English Title: Affair
Year of Release: 1982
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriters: Ricky Lee, Raquel N. Villavicencio, & Ishmael Bernal
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Vilma Santos, Christopher de Leon, Jimi Melendez, Lucy Quinto, Ernie Zarate, Manny Castañeda, Bing Fabregas, Beth Mondragon, Thaemar Achacoso, Dante Castro, Tony Angeles

After temporarily parting ways with his wife, Emil moves to an inherited house with his mistress, Marilou. Things start well but later on, Emil’s chauvinistic attitude causes Marilou to leave him. She eventually misses their relationship and returns to her lover. But Emil and Marilou’s supposedly happy reunion hits a snag when Emil’s wife suddenly returns, and Marilou discovers that Emil has a potentially fatal illness.

2—Broken Marriage

Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1983
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriters: Jose N. Carreon & Bing Caballero
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Vilma Santos, Christopher de Leon, Harlene Bautista, Richard Arellano, Len Santos, Lito Pimentel, Rey Ventura, Orestes Ojeda, Tessie Tomas, Spanky Manikan, Cesar Montano, Rey Ventura

Over the years, Rene and Ellen’s marriage has been gradually crumbling. They decide to temporarily split up, with Rene living with his friends and Ellen taking care of their two children. But soon, their separation makes matters worse as their marital problems start to affect their jobs and their family. Eventually, they are forced to reevaluate the terms of their relationship.

The plight of the other woman has been a recurrent theme in Philippine film and literature, and will persist for as long as the country remains the only secular nation where divorce is unavailable. Relasyon is as close to an archetypal film sample as we can get, and the fact that Ishmael Bernal and Ricky Lee had previously succeeded in painted-women narratives might have had a bearing on the degree of empathy and quality of insight that the film manifested. Vilma Santos, whose consummate performances lay elsewhere, nevertheless gives the role her best shot—meaning a load of charm and feminine flourishes alongside an occasional misfire. At his peak, Bernal could be pressured to repeat himself, but he would always manage to wind up with something new. After the success of Relasyon, its producer Regal Films brought together the movie’s lead performers and had the director tackle once more the theme of disorder and early sorrow in modern relationships. Both actors emerged with better performances than in the earlier film, and the feminist slant is developed with more subtlety, mainly by contrasting the central relationship with those of several others—from a giggly engaged couple to an elderly single-male parent, plus a ground-breaking depiction of a fairly viable same-sex arrangement. Although Relasyon is more distinctive as a study of the other woman, in contrast with Broken Marriage’s overworked wife, any imperfect film by Bernal can still trump the best efforts of most other filmmakers anywhere.

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Himala

English Title: Miracle
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1982
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Experimental Cinema of the Philippines

Cast: Nora Aunor, Veronica Palileo, Spanky Manikan, Gigi Dueñas, Vangie Labalan, Laura Centeno, Ama Quiambao, Ben Almeda, Pen Medina, Aura Mijares, Cris Daluz, Rey Ventura, Tony Angeles, Joe Gruta, Lem Garcellano, Vicky Castillo

Crowds gather at Cupang, a drought-stricken town, in search of Elsa, a girl who claims that she saw the Virgin Mary and could now heal the sick. Inundated by the sick and the fortune-seekers, Cupang begins to prosper but material values take hold of everyone. Eventually, Elsa and her friend Chayong are raped, causing Chayong to hang herself and Elsa to lose her confidence in healing. When some unusual natural events occur, people believe that miracles are possible once more and clamor for Elsa again. But this time, she has come to her own moral awakening.

The challenge for Manila-based artists when they explore areas beyond the metropolis is how to depict what may essentially be a foreign world while being true to the place as well as to their roots. The Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, which produced Himala, was already guaranteed an authentic “rural” narrative, period-historical at that, with Peque Gallaga’s Oro, Plata, Mata (1982). Himala, which in contrast was set in the north, also decided on a different tack by exploring how “Manila” becomes an imagined ideal, distant yet somehow attainable, in the lives of people in the rest of the country. Even the least secular personality, a faith healer, aspires to the politicized stature of a media celebrity and realizes her ethical predicament too late, via her own process of enlightenment. The fact that the project had managed to cast Nora Aunor in the central role gave the film institutional value beyond the issue of the separate worth of her performance—which, if it ever still needed pointing out, was as unassailable then as it remains today. Himala was initially welcomed with qualified enthusiasm, since commentators may have been put off by its makers’ refusal to create clear-cut moral identities as well as by the movie project’s authoritarian sponsorship. Since then, though, it has grown in stature and represents Bernal’s ability in responding to classical-humanist filmmaking challenges with his critical intelligence intact.

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Working Girls

Additional Languages: English, Spanish
Year of Release: 1984
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriter: Amado Lacuesta
Producer: Viva Films

Cast: Hilda Koronel, Rio Locsin, Gina Pareño, Tommy Abuel, Carmi Martin, Chanda Romero, Maria Isabel Lopez, Baby Delgado, Robert Arevalo, Edu Manzano, Joel Lamangan, Raoul Aragonn, Chris Michelena

Seven women show the ups and downs of working in a corporate world ruled by men. Carla has to compete with a womanizing coworker for a promotion. Isabel suddenly gets pregnant but is too meek to stand up for herself. Suzanne and Rose use womanly wiles to reach their goals. And while Nimfa and Amanda compete to marry the same man, Anne tries to keep her crumbling marriage from affecting her job.

Ishmael Bernal’s tribute to, and documentation of, the then-raging anti-dictatorship protest movement might appear to be asking to be differentiated from the typical entries, notably Mike de Leon’s Sister Stella L. (1984) and Lino Brocka’s Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim (1985). Yet Working Girls partakes of certain elements of these related texts, specifically the women-centeredness of Sister Stella L. and the labor-rights issues of Bayan Ko; otherwise Working Girls stands apart, in terms of its middle-class milieu, its multicharacter structure, and its comedic strategies. Another way of understanding it is to regard it as another version of Aliw (1979), updated and expanded but also gentrified, becoming more conventional in its equal-rights feminist argument but also more distinctive as the rare protest (and multicharacter) film with a happy ending—and just as vital at present, if not more so, than its contemporaries.

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Hinugot sa Langit

English Title: Wrenched from Heaven
Year of Release: 1985
Director: Ishmael Bernal
Screenwriter: Amado Lacuesta
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Maricel Soriano, Charito Solis, Dante Rivero, Al Tantay, Amy Austria, Rowell Santiago, Rey Ventura, Ronald Bregendahl, Gamaliel Viray, Tony Mabesa, Mario Taguiwalo

Carmen gets into an affair with a married man despite having a persistent suitor. When she becomes pregnant, her cousin Stella tells her to get an abortion. Carmen’s overly religious landlady Juling discourages her. As Carmen mulls her unborn baby’s fate, a series of events and personal issues cause her to evaluate her role in society as a woman.

Stung by ill-considered criticism of his technical abilities, Ishmael Bernal spent the most part of his late career polishing his films’ surfaces, prior to committing to orthodox-left ideals and succumbing to substance dependency—all arguably unnecessary for someone of his stature and capabilities. An occasional project, such as Hinugot sa Langit, would engage him with its impossible-to-resolve ethical and sociological questions, specifically on the usefulness of abortion as a legally unavailable option in a national culture that aspires toward liberal ideals yet makes impossible demands on its female citizens. Confronted with a clutch of thorny questions, Bernal could focus once more on his discursive strengths and provide entertainment that could endure extended evaluations. Significantly, and sadly, he had to step back afterward—to the vicinities of television and advertising, theater performance, and café proprietorship—to allow his peers, notably Lino Brocka, an opportunity to assimilate the lessons he had accumulated in film form, structure, characterization, and thematic development. But with Brocka’s sudden demise, Bernal’s spirit (as he himself averred) also seemed to give out. Yet no one since has been able to consistently transform complex material into accessible, even occasionally fun-to-watch, film presentations. A woefully early end to an extremely productive career.

Note

[1] “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” was a song from Evita (1976), initially a concept album and later a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice; despite the multimedia success of the pair’s previous musical Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), Imelda Marcos disallowed the staging of Evita because of her denial of any similarities between herself and Eva Perón, although its hit song could not be targeted because of its ubiquity, especially in discos. “Pamulinawen” (literally “alabaster”) is an Ilocano folk song allegedly sung by Ferdinand E. Marcos to his mistress Dovie Beams, whose voice she recorded along with their bouts of fornication; the audiotape managed to be copied and circulated among media practitioners, including rebel broadcasters at DZUP during the Diliman Commune of February 1971, and was transcribed for Chapter 16 of Hermie Rotea’s Marcos’ Lovey Dovie (Liberty Publishing, 1983). Apart from the parody of the Kabataang Barangay, the updating of Aling Otik as a Metro Manila Aide, while far from satirical per se, harbored some political baggage: the workers, mostly elderly working-class women, were initially charged with resisting street demonstrators—a harebrained and mercifully short-lived decision.

[2] The screenwriter repudiated her credit in a letter to the editor when the film was nominated for the Urian awards; her name was replaced by those of Franklin Cabaluna & Ishmael Bernal.

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