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Bambanti
English Title: Scarecrow
Additional Language: Pangasinan
Year of Release: 2015
Director & Screenwriter: Zig Madamba Dulay
Producers: Sinag Maynila, Solar Entertainment, Center Stage Productions
Cast: Alessandra de Rossi, Shamaine Buencamino, Micko Laurente, Julio Diaz, Delphine Buencamino, Lui Manansala, Erlinda Villalobos, Celio Aquino, Kiki Baento, Abegail Edillo, Jillian Pearl Paraggua, Noli Tamayo, Cristina Agustin, Ofelia Utanes, Verna Riza Agonoy, Santiago Norberte, Ligaya Rivera, Jeffrey Rivera, Angeles Reginaldo, Helson Cadiz, Jerival Guanco
After her husband was killed by unidentified assassins, Belyn performs laundry tasks for her better-off sister-in-law Martha, in order to continue the elementary education of her two children and nurse the youngest. She takes her son Popoy along with her because she can count on his intelligence to help her. One day, however, Martha realizes that her teen daughter’s expensive watch is missing. A fortuneteller says that a boy and his mother took it, so she queries Popoy, who denies committing the theft. Martha files a complaint with the village officials and the townfolk begin to turn on mother and son.
Zig Madamba Dulay’s extensive practice in film storytelling has prepared him for the standard low-budget exercise on which Bambanti is premised. Proceeding like any typical indie production, the film draws its strength from the delivery of its narrative’s central trio of mother, son, and sister-in-law. Dulay’s point of departure, however, lies in allowing the familial and community players to enact their roles as concerned bystanders without casting aspersions on any of them, in contrast with the way that several contemporaneous entries succeeded with the local elite and even foreign markets by indulging in the victim-centered demonization of Manila’s Others. So the film’s plot twists, when they arrive, prove as much surprising to the attentive viewer as they do to the characters, and underline the insight that so much potential in this type of material has been wasted in the past because of the essentially exploitative approach of filmmakers who wished to impress their colleagues and superiors at the expense of the hapless folk they trained their equipment on.
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