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Takaw Tukso
English Translation: Constant Craving
Year of Release: 1986
Director: William Pascual
Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producer: Ultravision Films
Cast: Gino Antonio, Julio Diaz, Jaclyn Jose, Anna Marie Gutierrez, Anita Linda, Lucita Soriano, Eva Darren, Tony Rubio
A solid friendship exists among Nestor, his fiancée Debbie, his cousin Boy, and Debbie’s friend Letty. But it gets shattered when a distraught Debbie elopes with Boy after she gets into a fight with her mother. The two get married but settle in the car-repair shop where Nestor lives and works. Tensions rise even further when true-hearted Letty weds Nestor and they live right beside Debbie and Boy.
Tragedy has conveniently become the coin of the realm of the senses, mainly because the medieval tendencies of Philippine Catholicism prefer that people who indulge in sexual pleasure must be made to pay—extravagantly, if possible—for their perceived transgression(s). The creative forces behind this project managed a way out of the predictability of this narrative approach by returning to the basics. It does this by grounding the material in the originary spirit of neorealism, as embodied in the frank sensuality of Luchino Visconte’s Ossessione (Obsession, 1943), a then-daring adaptation of James M. Cain’s occasionally banned crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). With an observational expertise that would be the envy of veteran ethnographic filmmakers, Takaw Tukso (like Ossessione) envisions economically impoverished characters involved in dangerous games of seduction and clandestine assignations. Passion ultimately gets the better of their professional and friendly relations, and a comeuppance elevates the drama to the level of some of the most innovative strains in classical Greek theater.
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