Canon Decampment: Mel Chionglo

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Playgirl

Additional Language: “Swardspeak” [Philippine gay lingo]
Year of Release: 1981
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Charito Solis, Gina Alajar, Phillip Salvador, Alicia Alonzo, Mary Walter, Al Tantay, Gabby Concepcion, Lily Miraflor, Jimi Melendez, Ernie Zarate, Deborah Sun, Emma Valeros, Joonee Gamboa, Renee Johnson

Tonya endures her profession as a middle-aged Chinatown hooker to enable her daughter to finish high school. Cindy, however, prefers to audition at singing contests despite having no talent, and hang out with her good-time pals, through whom she meets Boogie, a smooth-talking pimp. Tonya’s discovery that Cindy never completed her studies drives the latter to finding any available job. When Tonya learns that Cindy has become a prostitute, she drives her daughter away, further intensifying Cindy’s resolve to succeed in sex work.

Although he had dabbled in other aspects of film production, Mel Chionglo became best known as a production designer, prior to debuting as a filmmaker. Not surprisingly, Playgirl foregrounds this element (with Benjie de Guzman in charge), with a deliberately measured pace allowing its audience to partake of its impressively detailed environment. What got overlooked, in the initial flurry of reservations regarding languid sensibility and sordid subject matter, was the carefully calibrated treatment that inhered in Ricky Lee’s screenplay. The women realize that it may be next-to-impossible to break out of the life, but it also motivates them to redefine the terms of their relationships with men and, when afforded an opportunity, with their exploiters as well. Its compassionate dissection of mothering evokes several high points in Classical Hollywood cinema (notably King Vidor’s 1937 Stella Dallas), with Playgirl qualifying the female parent’s readiness to sacrifice by counterweighting it with an essential component of righteous rage.

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Sinner or Saint

Year of Release: 1984
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Claudia Zobel, Charito Solis, Gloria Romero, Patrick dela Rosa, Ricky Davao, Raffy Bonanza, Rey Malte Cruz, Julio Diaz, Joey Galvez

Despite being a wife to Fred and a mother to their child, Dina cannot resist her youthful restlessness. Against familial objections, she goes to Manila to pursue her studies but ends up having an affair with a classmate. When Fred learns of this, he takes his wife back to their hometown where they have another child. But it does not take long before Dina’s promiscuity gets her into trouble again.

Sex goddess Claudia Zobel died in a vehicular accident right after completing work on a film whose narrative bizarrely paralleled her peripatetic and unconventional existence, and uncannily predicted her tragic end. Based on the tabloid report of a woman who kept abandoning her well-appointed rural middle-class family for a series of dangerous big-city encounters, the film maintained the abject elements of her tale while providing Dina, the central character, with heightened self-awareness, as a sometime student of literature and occasional critic of traditional gender roles. Despite the harrowing depths of Dina’s self-degradation, the film is remarkably non-judgmental about the decisions she makes and their effects on her family and lovers—a rare local achievement in film naturalism.

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1—Nasaan Ka Nang Kailangan Kita

English Translation: Where Were You When I Needed You
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1986
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Susan Roces, Hilda Koronel, Snooky Serna, Janice de Belen, Eddie Garcia, Aga Muhlach, Richard Gomez, Chanda Romero, Anita Linda, Katrin Gonzales, Vangie Labalan, Ernie Zarate, Alfred Barretto

Cristy finishes high school at the top of her class, but her mother Rosa informs her that she cannot afford to send her to college, asking her instead to help her expand her food-catering operation. Cristy instead seeks help from her estranged father Julio, whose wealthy wife resents Cristy’s presence in their household. Rosa refuses to reconcile with Cristy and instead pressures her younger daughter to work harder so she can prove to Julio that his abandonment did not crush her. The older generation’s concerns intensify with the younger people as their pawns, until Julio’s undiscovered medical condition gets the better of him.

2—Paano Kung Wala Ka Na

English Title: What Will Happen When You’re Gone
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1987
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Susan Roces, Eddie Gutierrez, Charo Santos-Concio, Snooky Serna, Miguel Rodriguez, Mona Lisa, Marissa Delgado, Debraliz, Ramil Rodriguez, Chanda Romero, Romeo Rivera, Linda Montenegro, Raquel Villavicencio, Becky Misa, Malou de Guzman, Luis Benedicto

After raising Ampy, a mature and level-headed daughter, Raffy feels suffocated by his marriage to Ruby and wishes he could start anew with Doris, his mistress. Ampy meanwhile is perturbed when her boyfriend Don insists on going abroad for further training even after she tells him that she’s pregnant with their child. Sonny, her long-time admirer, takes a job in Raffy’s firm so he could get closer to Ampy. Ruby’s old flame Gary also starts hanging out with Ruby even though he’s still married to a mutual acquaintance of theirs. As someone who believes in propriety and keeping her feelings to herself, Ruby realizes that she has to undergo a process of adjusting to a messy and constantly changing world.

Despite some problems brought on by her attempting monopolistic control as well as by the meddling of self-appointed culture authorities led by then First Lady Imelda Marcos, Lily Monteverde was a true-blue cinema fan who made sure to introduce old-time talents, genres, and traditions whenever the opportunities presented themselves. Her success with First Golden Age movie queen Susan Roces had all the hallmarks of laudatory tributes, at a time in Philippine production history when such attempts were too retrograde for the hip crowd yet too advanced for screen-culture scholars. No matter though, since the films were warmly welcomed by their intended audiences and earned Roces a younger set of admirers. Around this time “Mother” Lily also successfully revived the Guy & Pip tandem, the country’s most successful multimedia love team; but it’s the Roces films that set the template. Both focus on conflicts in the domestic sphere, with the interests of mothers and daughters colliding with shifting social values. Nasaan Ka Nang Kailangan Kita negotiates class-crossed outings while Paano Kung Wala Ka Na confines itself to the privileged sector. Each one makes sure to arrive at a point where the women can have a satisfactory resolution, with Roces’s histrionic confidence building up as the earlier film leads to the later one. No one will commit the mistake of wishing she tackled the historical and/or working-class tragediennes on which, say, Anita Linda or Nora Aunor founded their reputations, but within the circumscribed terms that her persona observes, no one will wish that someone else had taken her part either.

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Babaing Hampaslupa

English Title: Vagrant Woman
Alternate Title: Babaeng Hampaslupa
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1988
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Maricel Soriano, Richard Gomez, Edu Manzano, Rowell Santiago, Gina Alajar, Janice de Belen, Liza Lorena, Leni Santos, Carmina Villaroel, Anita Linda, Mario Escudero, Vangie Labalan, Roscoe Martin, Eva Ramos, Lucy Quinto, Josie Galvez, Rosanna Jover, Sylvia Garde, Maribel Legarda, Tita de Villa, Aida Carmona, Ilonah Jean, Alma Lerma, Evelyn Vargas, Joe Jardi, Malou de Guzman, Hazel Atuel, Bing Davao, Edgar Palomar, Elaine Eleazar, Lollie Mara, Bon Vibar, Valerie Mayor, Patty Calupitan, Romy Bermudo, Troy Martino

After their mother elopes with a neighborhood suitor, Remedios assumes responsibility for her two younger sisters. She couldn’t make ends meet via farmwork, so she entrusts her sisters to relatives and migrates to Manila. She finds work as a dunk-tank girl in a carnival, where Vincent, a slumming entrepreneur, takes pity on her and recruits her for his bus company. She agrees to be a ticket conductor since it’s the only job opening at the moment, and becomes fast friends with another lady conductor as well as her route driver, Jimmy, who offers her residential space in his small family home. When Vincent finally finds a less stressful position for her, she realizes that he and Jimmy are both interested in her and resolves to pursue her pragmatism, since it had enabled her to upgrade her stature in society.

Maricel Soriano’s star persona was popularly described as taray (fierce or sassy) but its expansion in film roles necessarily transmuted into street-tough combativeness (butangera would be the closest equivalent), where its comic roots served to temper her characters’ harsh behavior. That she would turn out to be the most successful among the Regal Babies crop of young talents also indicated a perfect fit with the company’s (and its owner’s) unruly reputation, constantly running into trouble with the hypocritical moral guardians of the martial-law regime of the earlier Ferdinand Marcos. Babaing Hampaslupa provides what may be the closest to a standard version of her persona’s trajectory: a ferocious personal struggle against destitution that mirrors her real-life narrative, leading to early triumph via charm, talent, and chutzpah, with an ill-advised turn into the excesses and indulgences of the high life leading either to catastrophic loss or, as in this film, to (re)discovering fulfillment in returning to the family and community she once left behind. The moralism of this type of closure might have accounted for the apparent cold reception by conservative critics resistant to the challenges posed by genre studies, consequently missing out on a vital opportunity to connect popular culture with then-emerging trends in feminist empowerment and queer politics after the collapse of the military dictatorship.

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Developing Stories: Lucia

Alternate Title: Lucia
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1992
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
From a story by Lino Brocka
Producers: Manila Inter-Film Productions, BBC Television, Television Trust for the Environment, One World Group of Broadcasters

Cast: Lolita Rodriguez, Gina Alajar, Suzette Ranillo, Elvira Baldomero, Jonathan Darca, Lorenzo Mara, Mario Escudero, Aurelio Estrada, Marilou Garingalao, Nanding Josef, Vangie Labalan, Mark Jason, Aida Carmona, Pocholo Montes, Malou de Guzman, Dante Balois, Eva Ramos, Edgar Santiago, Carmen Serafin, Mike Montey, Evelyn Vargas, Fred Capulong, Estrella Antonio, Reggie Lasam, Joel Lamangan, Rey Malte Cruz, Prones Gonzales, Jun dela Paz, Domingo Landicho, Renato Morado, Edna May Landicho, Nonie Buencamino, Pons de Guzman, Loida Damondon, Chie Concepcion, Kess Burias, Rody Vera, Rey Ventura, Lucy Quinto, Josie Galvez, Mari Sambilay, Ireneo Flores, Lucita Soriano, Sylvia Sanchez

After an oil-tanker spill, most residents of a fishing village migrate outward, to be able to earn a living. Since Lucia’s husband and father refuse to leave, she stays on with her family. After her husband and his fellow fishermen are gunned down for venturing too close to privately owned fish pens, Lucia decides to move her family to Manila, although her daughter Cynthia remains to be with her husband Ador, a peasant organizer. In Manila, her daughter Chedeng, who also lost her spouse in the same incident where her father was killed, is able to secure sweatshop work. Lucia however could not watch over her younger daughter Jenny, who gets drawn into the red-light district overrun by foreign pedophiles. She sends her young son to school but he gets waylaid by child hoodlums and soon partakes of their use and selling of illegal drugs. When Cynthia clandestinely asks to see Chedeng to report that Ador was abducted by soldiers and that she has become a wanted figure, Chedeng also confides her involvement in union work. Lucia’s family and neighbors are driven out of the slum area by a developer and reduced to scrounging for resellable scraps at the notorious Smokey Mountain landfill.

Lucia stands as the best-realized of the many projects left behind by Lino Brocka, after his sudden death in a 1991 vehicular accident. It exhibits his late-career preference for incident-packed storytelling, resembling Orapronobis (1989) but with the narrative driven by a woman whose heroic efforts at overseeing the welfare of her family are thwarted by the inhumane malignancy of uneven neoliberal development. Only Brocka could have bestowed full justice to this tale, but Chionglo manages with enough compensatory achievements to make the film worth one’s time. His sense of socioeconomic milieu is arguably superior to Brocka’s—no mean achievement by any measure, and essential in a narrative that barrels ahead almost without pause for its characters’ (and audiences’) recovery. Even more impressively, he extracts from Lolita Rodriguez veristic depths that she was never able to display in any of her outings with Brocka, enabling her to claim to being one of Philippine cinema’s acting greats. Anyone who still harbored doubts about Chionglo attempting a global master’s material might find further confirmation in his then-forthcoming trilogy on male erotic dancers, a takeoff from Macho Dancer (1988), Brocka’s biggest overseas hit.

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1—Sibak: Midnight Dancers

English Translation: Hacked: Midnight Dancers
Alternate Title: Midnight Dancers
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1994
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Tangent Films International

Cast: Alex del Rosario, Gandong Cervantes, Lawrence David, Luis Cortes, Richard Cassity, Danny Ramos, John Mendoza, Leonard Manalansan, Perla Bautista, Ryan Aristorenas, Soxy Topacio, Gino Paul Guzman, Maureen Mauricio, Jeffrey Suarez, Ray Ventura, Nonie Buencamino, RS Francisco, Cherry Pie Picache, Cezar Xerez-Burgos, Romy Romulo, Anthony Taylor, Leonard Obal, Gino Fernando, Frannie Zamora, Armando A. Reyes, Cherry Cornell, Edel Templonuevo, Archi Adamos, Francis Villacorta, Chie Concepcion, Roden Biag, Herbie Go, Frank Rivera

Arriving from Cebu to join his family, Sonny is informed by his mother that the family can’t afford to fund the continuation of his studies yet. His brothers bring him to their workplace, a gay bar, so he can observe them and maybe earn some money from customers who invite him to their tables; eventually the manager notices his popularity and asks him to try his luck in dancing, like his brothers. Dave, who once lived with Joel, visits the place again because he couldn’t stand being apart and accepts Joel’s married status and desire to continue working. Dennis, Sonny’s other brother, gets fired because of his drug habit and winds up jacking cars with a small gang. He also meets Bogart, an apparently homeless youth, and brings him to their residence to be fed and sheltered. The family’s links to the underworld, despite their careful conduct, leads to dangerous consequences when it shows up to haunt them.

2—Burlesk King

Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1999
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Seiko Films

Cast: Rodel Velayo, Leonardo Litton, Elizabeth Oropesa, Raymond Bagatsing, Cherry Pie Picache, Gino Ilustre, Nini Jacinto, Joonee Gamboa, Joel Lamangan, Tonio Ortigas, Ross Rival, Frannie Zamora, Joseph Buncalan, Arthur Casanova, Joey Galvez, Joseph Pe, Sofia Valdez, Aila Marie, Lucy Quinto, Teresa Jamias, Jazzi Oropesa, John Wayne Sace, Jake Mendoza, Edgar Santiago, Eric Hegazy, Dante Gomez, Jonathan Paguio, Jhim Tarrosa, Dennis Coronel, Jude Molato, Marvin Lim, Patrick Suarez, Natz Ordon, Jerry de Vera, Reden Villar, Bojo Roa, Leandro Reyes, Jun dela Paz, Alex Cabudil, Marcel Geronimo, Francis Angeles, Jeffrey Lopez, Raneth Jordan, Yessa Jordan, Gino Fernando, Diding de Andres, Daniel Isherwood, Kevin Isherwood, Patrick Richardson, Lee Walco, Amid Eton, Mark Dionisio, Rey Fernando, Justine Perez, Pinky Roces, Remy Aquino Talents

Harry is introduced to a croupier’s job by his best friend James. After the latter fends off extortionists who target the gambling den, they attack him on the street and he winds up killing one of them. He and Harry then flee to Manila, where they find employment as erotic dancers. Harry’s only quirk is his refusal to accommodate American customers, since he still remembers having been traumatized by his American father. He and James live with Harry’s lesbian sister and her partner, while Harry becomes the favorite of a brokenhearted writer and successfully courts a gold-hearted female sex worker who never turns away street urchins asking for food or money. Harry’s pursuits come to a head when he finds out one day that his mother, stabbed by his father when she tried to escape his clutches with Harry, survived the attack.

3—Twilight Dancers

Additional Language: Pampango
Year of Release: 2006
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Center Stage Productions

Cast: Tyron Perez, Cherry Pie Picache, Allen Dizon, Lauren Novero, Ana Capri, William Martinez, Arnel Ignacio, Joel Lamangan, Jerry Lopez Sineneng, Glaiza de Castro, JE Sison, IC Mendoza, Terence Baylon, Kris Martinez, Chester Nolledo, Dennis Recto, Dino Dizon, Marvin Bautista, Harold Montano, Christian Navesis, Johnron Tañada, Topher Castro, Randy Macapagal, Jack Gabaisen, Tyrone Trias, Kryven Lacson, Perry Escano, Miggs Espina, Paolo Larosa

Rescued by Alfred from an abusive family, Dwight joins his friend to work as an erotic dancer. Since his wife disapproves of his profession, Dwight becomes instead a ballroom-dance instructor, despite the smaller income. Madam Loca, who’s fond of rentboys, takes a liking to Dwight and hires him to entertain the murderous and decadent town mayor. Dwight tells his sponsor that he’s saving up to be able to work overseas, so she conscripts him for a well-paying special assignment, which Alfred asks to join for extra income.

After Macho Dancer (1988) became Lino Brocka’s most profitable overseas release, it became possible for his confrere Mel Chionglo, conscripting one of the film’s scriptwriters, to propose another project along the same lines. The still-successful release of Sibak led to two other films also dealing with the lives of working-class male erotic dancers. The first essential point about these entries, despite some of their titles’ attempts to resemble Macho Dancer, is that they were sequels neither to Brocka’s films nor to one another (Ricky Lee, Facebook Messenger, February 22, 2025), thus lending credence to Joel Lamangan’s claim that his Anak ng Macho Dancer (Son of Macho Dancer, 2021) was the first actual sequel to the Brocka film. But a rewatch of the three Chionglo titles in succession also makes another point evident: the trilogy as a whole surpasses the Brocka film—admittedly not a tall order, considering how Brocka himself was still a few projects away from dispensing with conscienticizing foreign viewers, toward recapturing the local mass audience with a light-handed skills display, the likes of which have never been replicated. Nevertheless, the Chionglo films also perform the careful mission of reworking (a different creature from remaking) Macho Dancer, more or less following its chronological presentation: Sibak introduces the social milieu where erotic dancers attempt to redefine family and friendship on workable terms, Burlesk King focuses on the personal circumstances of the typical worker’s extensive sojourn, and Twilight Dancers inspects the sexual and political exploitation conducted by the very officials tasked with overseeing the welfare of the dispossessed. Where Macho Dancer was hesitant in suspending its judgment of the seamier elements of the underworld, the trilogy embraces the entire gamut of so-called perverse sexualities and prohibitions, the better to cast in relief the instances when these options are exercised at the expense of Others. The universe they reveal is peopled by characters who’re loud, theatrical, violent, inclined to camp and drama, with genuinely affecting backstories even when they function as villains, an acquiantanceship worth making when one is in need of intensive rehumanizing.

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Iadya Mo Kami

English Title: Deliver Us
Additional Languages: English, Ilocano
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Mel Chionglo
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: BG Productions International

Cast: Allen Dizon, Eddie Garcia, Aiko Melendez, Ricky Davao, Diana Zubiri, Rolando Inocencio, Allan Paule, Ana Feleo, Elora Españo, Tabs Sumulong, Carlo Juan, Brian Arda, Leo Sarmiento, Jess Evardone, James Pascual, James Alanis, Mark Nino Brinsuwela, Minerva Torrejos, Bongjon Jose

Father Greg, a young priest, is transferred by his order to a far-flung diocese, where he learns that the small town is dominated by Julian, an overbearing landlord. He carefully navigates his way around the place, especially since Carla, with whom he had a child out of wedlock, followed him to work out their relationship. The womanizing Julian, whose tolerant wife also takes a shine to the priest, discovers Father Greg’s secret and discusses the situation with him over drinks. When Julian is discovered murdered afterward, Father Greg’s life takes a spin that he barely manages to handle.

Mel Chionglo’s entire career proved most productive in his collaborations with Ricky Lee, yet his last film remains an enigmatic entry, since neither talent had exhibited any leaning toward the spiritual. Yet with Iadya Mo Kami, they managed to advance the strongest religious text in Philippine cinema, ironically by focusing on a cleric teetering on the precipice of moral collapse, more concerned about the human cost of his actuations than about his standing in heaven. Chionglo pulls off this feat by infusing the film with a strong undercurrent of melancholy, allowing the ravishing beauty of the mountain setting to do the necessary work of seducing the audience. Topnotch performances abound, with special attention to Allen Dizon’s quietly authoritative delivery and Aiko Melendez’s fire-and-ice reading of an unpredictable yet fearsomely secure political wife.

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