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Ang Tanging Ina
English Title: My Only Mother
Year of Release: 2003
Director: Wenn V. Deramas
Screenwriters: Mel Mendoza-del Rosario & Keiko Aquino
(From a story by Mel Mendoza-del Rosario & Freddie M. Garcia)
Producer: Star Cinema
Cast: Aiai delas Alas, Connie Chua, Eugene Domingo, Edu Manzano, Tonton Gutierrez, Andoy Ranay, Alan Chanliongco, Jestoni Alarcon, Carlo Aquino, Nikki Valdez, Heart Evangelista, Marvin Agustin, Serena Dalrymple, Shaina Magdayao, Alwyn Uytingco, Jiro Manio, Marc Acueza, Yuki Kadooka, Jojit Lorenzo, Rommel Rellora, Anthony Griar, Nestor Balla, Angelica Panganiban, Dianne Tejada, Michelle Ayalde, Nikki Laurel, Liberty Lometillo, John Pratts, Jestoni Alarcon, Dennis Padilla, Edu Manzano, Tonton Gutierrez
Ina Montecillo falls into a pattern of discovering a handsome hunk eager to marry her, then suddenly losing said hunk in an accident and discovering her next marriageable prospect just when she lays her previous hubby to rest. After three husbands and a dozen kids, she decides to live as a single parent, to spare any future men whatever jinx she may be cursed with. Her BFF Rowena helps her in applying to any available job, but her burgeoning brood, the oldest members of whom are already of school age, demands her attention as well because of their growing-up pains.
One of a number of millennial-era victims of the punishing workload of TV-dominated film work, Wenn V. Deramas suffered further from the film-as-art ideology propagated by academe-based critic-instructors and mindlessly mouthed by practitioners—all of whom should have known better. Ang Tanging Ina’s revenge on this state of affairs actually sealed its fate as a permanently downgraded entry: not only was it produced by the most successful film studio since the end of the Second Golden Age, it was also the most profitable Filipino film project up to its time. It generated a number of sequels (although, strictly speaking, Deramas made only two that proceeded from ATI’s narrative premise); more significantly, and just as casually neglected, was the impressive development of his expertise in comedy, along with several of the talents in ATI. At the time of his demise, over a decade later, he seemed poised to rival Manuel Conde and Maryo J. de los Reyes, guaranteeing (if his and our luck hadn’t run out) one master for each of our Golden Ages plus himself as the current one. He remained prolific, to his tragic detriment, with ATI standing as proof of his then-nascent comedic gift: an ability to deliver complex expositions, an incomparable sense of timing, a fearlessness in extending setups and payoffs, and a sharp attunement to the quotidian concerns of the audience. Underlying the expected generic compromises and containment, ATI nevertheless maintains a drag-queer edginess in upholding a funny-looking elderly lady as the flamboyant master of a multifariously strenuous situation.
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Moron 5 and the Crying Lady
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Wenn V. Deramas
Screenwriters: Mel Mendoza-del Rosario & Wenn V. Deramas
Producers: Viva Films & MVP Pictures
Cast: Luis Manzano, Billy Crawford, Marvin Agustin, DJ Durano, Martin Escudero, John Lapus, Andrew Wolfe, German Moreno, Jon Santos, Roden Araneta, Dennis Padilla, Roldan Aquino, Deborah Sun, Arlene Muhlach, Joy Viado, Mark Felix, Marco Brillo, Carlos Dala, Kevin Kier Remo, Martin Venegas, Kule Ang, Eagle Riggs, Tess Antonio, Dang Cruz, Christopher Roxas, Carlos Agassi, Eri Neeman, Hideaki Torio, Phobie, Ya Chang, Renee Hampshire, Flora Gasser, Nikki Gil, Reynand Luarez, Jennylyn Mercado, JC Parker, Ricky Rivero
As elementary-school classmates, Beckie harbored a crush on Albert, but his tight-knit group, comprising Isaac, Aristotle, Mozart, and Mike, kept mocking and bullying him. The five remain such nitwits that they become the oldest high-school students at St. Andrew Academy. When they see an ad looking for performers, they apply but get instructed to wear G-strings for an audience of gays and women. They flee from having to service the customers but wander into the church wedding of a Japanese bridegroom and his Pinay fiancée. Mozart remembers a Japanese word from his street-smart parents and they keep repeating it, which happens to mean “queer.” Upon hearing it, the bridegroom realizes that his wife-to-be, Beckie, was born male and dies from a heart attack. From that point onward, Beckie vows revenge against the five friends and uses her wealth to devise various ways of framing them so they could get arrested and thrown in jail.
What appears to be a formulaic setup with the usual plethora of jokes, witticisms, and absurdities packaged within a crime-doesn’t-pay framework and exacerbated with a valorization of infantile behavior, prevails despite its baggage because of its creatives’ and ensemble’s accumulation of comedic skills, complemented by an embrace of political incorrectness and careful tweaks of potentially awkward portions. The most rewarding reformulation is in the casting of the central collection of holy fools: the logical expectation would be to hire pre-breakout talents, the way that past group films managed to minimize salary budgets while maximizing the actors’ collective appeal. What Moron 5 and the Crying Lady did instead was corral the precise opposite—post-famous actors, replete with performative skills as well as personal histories already familiar to observers—a strategy that was surefire in the past, but only in the case of sexually mature actresses and far older actors. Their melding of interactive exchanges and delight in one another’s presences succeeds so well that the presentation of differences among them could be treated as incidental necessities. The accrual of their early-millennium personas also makes them queer-friendly enough so that the title character’s Crying (trans) Lady can confidently indulge her brand of postqueer meanness, with the extra treat of other skilled performers cross-dressing into some of the supporting and cameo roles. We don’t need to launch into another diatribe right now against critical high-mindedness that wasted the opportunity to honor one more contribution of a directorial talent who would be departing not soon after: the closing credits, worth some spare attention for summarizing the Moron 5 actors’ real-life careers, also shows the Crying Lady bantering with (the impersonator of) a political figure who’d be making her own triumphant comeback not long afterward, a symbolic consequence of our failing to heed one of the warnings casually sounded in pop culture.
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