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They Call Her … Cleopatra Wong

Alternate Titles: Cleopatra Wong; Female Big Boss
Language: English
Year of Release: 1978
Director: Bobby A. Suarez (as George Richardson)
Screenwriter: Romeo N. Galang
From a story by Bobby A. Suarez
Producer: BAS Film Productions

Cast: Marrie Lee, George Estregan, Dante Varona, Johnny Wilson, Kerry Chandler, Franco Guerrero, Alex Pecate, Philip Gamboa, Danny Rojo, Bobby Greenwood, Jesse Lee, Joaquin Fajardo, Victor Romero, Joe Cunanan, Steve Havarro, Avel Morado, Romy Misa, Bernie Bernardo, Joe Canlas, Tony Castro, Mark Sherak, Clem Persons, Paul Mejares, Robert Mendez, Buddy Philipps, Don Gordon Bell, Robert Mallet, Skip Kriegel, Mike Youngblood, Bill James, John Stewart, Thunderboys Stuntmen, PIS Stuntmen

Instructed by Manila Interpol, Cleo hies off to Singapore to investigate the proliferation of fake currencies across the major ASEAN countries; she passes herself off as a counterfeiter so she could be picked up by a middleman. After subduing him and his goons, she’s then assigned to Hong Kong, to track the arrival of fake money in jars of strawberry jam. This leads her and her Interpol detectives to a convent in Baguio, where they attempt to uncover the mystery of why a religious order would engage in a global criminal operation.

Long appreciated more outside than within his home country, Bobby A. Suarez turned out to be just the right candidate to export for overseas film production. An ardent B-movie aficionado, familiar with the latest contrivances that popular entertainment had on offer, he lucked out with an assignment that enabled him, though on an apparently tight budget, to shoot in three countries with a large cast. The resulting poverty-row epic featured some of the wildest flights of imagination ever witnessed in a Filipino-directed action film, complemented by the wit and charm of Singaporean actress Marrie Lee, who was sharp enough to know that the entire enterprise shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but provides just the right amount of nimble-footed intensity to be able to foreground the work’s campy elements. Subsequent Suarez projects affirmed his belief in the transnational crime-control function of Interpol, but Cleopatra Wong marks the point right before his professional competence and influential outreach overpowered the several mésalliances that managed to proliferate in the present narrative.

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Red Roses for a Call Girl

Alternate Titles: The True Confession of Diana; Rose Tattoo
Language: English
Year of Release: 1988
Director & Screenwriter: Bobby A. Suarez
Producer: BAS Film Productions

Cast: Maria Isabel Lopez, Robert Marius, Werner Pochat, Julia Kent, Manfred Seipold, Amanda Amores, Pia Moran, Arnold Mendoza, Vangie Labalan

In Germany, a streetwalker named Marian gets abducted because she hasn’t been able to repay the money she owes her pimp, Ringo. The same woman, who now calls herself Barbara, reappears at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and makes the acquaintance of Klaus Timberg, who arrives because his profligate son, Peter, is given over to drag racing and nightlife. Klaus secretly hires a local sex worker, Diana, to induce his son to fall in love. As it turns out, Diana’s procurer is Ringo, who relocated to evade criminal prosecution in Germany. When Barbara, via Klaus, learns about this, she attempts to seek vengeance; Klaus’s predicament gets even more complicated when Peter discovers that Diana is really a sex professional.

The first notable element in Red Roses for a Call Girl is how it departs from the usual war-set or futuristic action (and even horror) material that foreign coproductions insisted on when they selected the Philippines as location for their film investment, in the wake of the initial success of the Marcos-era Manila International Film Festival. Opting for a loose reworking of La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, Bobby A. Suarez instead devised a low-budget drama that nevertheless expands on the original’s themes of exploitation, familial bonds, and cross-cultural romance. The far-from-ideal production values and performances (excepting the native talents, unsurprisingly) accrue their own level of charm, the way that Third World ventures occasionally succeed in doing, in contrast with the Hollywoodish aspirations of the typical local productions of the period.

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Hubad na Pangarap

English Translation: Naked Ambition
Year of Release: 1987
Director: Abbo Q. dela Cruz
Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producer: Golden Pearl Production

Cast: Michael de Mesa, Julio Diaz, Anna Marie Gutierrez, Lola, Vangie Labalan, Archi Adamos, Dante Castro, Chris Daluz, Tony Angeles, Tony Martinez, Stella Strada II, Jesse dela Paz, Lina Anota, Dick Morados

Miguel arrives at his rural rest house with several of his swinger friends, including a good-time girl with whom he hooks up. When his volatile girlfriend Cindy arrives, she throws a fit and drives all the visitors away, allowing Miguel to appease her by making out with her. All by themselves, they turn their attention to the place’s caretakers, Nelia and Ador, a poor but attractive couple engaged to each other. Miguel and Ador are childhood chums, but Miguel’s interest in Nelia starts to strain their friendship. Cindy’s exploitative regard toward Ador meanwhile leads to a bloody resolution in which the police are forced to intervene.

Abbo Q. dela Cruz’s debut film, Misteryo sa Tuwa (Joyful Mystery, 1984), was a film maudit that will always be worth at least one viewing, but that will probably be defensible as strictly a late-era Cold War masterpiece—patriarchal, myopic, and desperate. It was so overblown that it came close to shutting down the film production division of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, which nevertheless came up with one last debut piece, Pio de Castro III’s Soltero (Bachelor, 1984), a film that replicated its shortcomings, albeit on a decidedly more intimate scale. Dela Cruz had better timing with his sophomore project, written by one of the winners of the next batch’s scriptwriting contest (which were never produced because of the preceding year’s follies). The Misteryo sa Tuwa connection provides the first step in comprehending the offbeat properties of Hubad na Pangarap: its misanthropy is unmistakeable, but this time more carefully skewed against its privileged characters, so that its ineluctable misogyny is favorably contrasted with its masculine characters’ meanness or feeble-mindedness. The libertarian spell occasioned by ECP-screened entries also fostered the busting of the final Catholic taboo against displaying the male form, so Hubad na Pangarap enables a more-than-game Julio Diaz to cocktease not just his onscreen female master but an unsuspecting general audience as well. More productively, the film can be regarded as the middle entry in a trilogy scripted by Armando Lao, bookended by William Pascual’s Takaw Tukso (Constant Craving, 1986) and Chito S. Roño’s Itanong Mo sa Buwan (Moon Child, 1987), depicting increasing narrative complexity where working-class masculinities are confronted with and confounded by the well-laid schemes of the femme fatale.

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Sarong Banggi

English Title: One Night
Additional Languages: English, Bikol
Year of Release: 2005
Director & Screenwriter: Emmanuel Dela Cruz
Producers: Cinemalaya Foundation, UFO Pictures, Cutting Edge Productions

Cast: Jaclyn Jose, Angelo Ilagan, Greg Rodriguez III, Alchris Galura, Miguel Iñigo Guño, Jam Rodriguez, Miguel V. Fabie III, Tanya Guerrero, Ronald Diama, Ester Reyes, Josephine M. Abelgas, Victor Cusi, Roger Macusi, Cesar P. dela Cruz, Jean dela Cruz, Mica Torre, C.J. dela Cruz, Rose Beltran, Monster Jimenez, Mario Cornejo, Josel Garlitos, Marlon Despues, Jing Villaruel, Ariel Carullo, Lorena Landicho, Lilia Villena

On the eve of his birthday, Nyoy is brought by his friends to the vicinity of Manila’s red-light district. They made an arrangement with Jaclyn so that Nyoy can have his first carnal experience. When they see her from a distance, they’re realize that she’s older than she claims to be so they decide to ignore her and proceed to a bar where they pick up a younger girl to pair with Nyoy. The girl however prefers a more exciting partner, so she allows herself to be picked up by another man in a convenience store. When Nyoy realizes he’s been abandoned by everyone, he returns to the open-air restaurant where Jaclyn sits by herself and invites him to join her.

Essentially a two-hander once Nyoy and (the reflexively named) Jaclyn start their interaction, Sarong Banggi attains a rare look at awkward intimacy that evolves into a harsh, deromanticized glimpse of the inner life of a fallen woman. Key to its achievement is Jaclyn Jose’s ruthless attack, allowing the once-hopeful but now regret-ridden character to take over without any hint of the performer perfecting her craft—which paradoxically makes perfection possible. By underlining some of her lines with contrapuntal behavior, she enables the narrative to reach places without requiring expository explanation. A plot twist that would have defeated lesser artists becomes a marvel of multistratified delivery: does she cry from disappointment, joy, horror, or self-pity? The composure that she forces herself to assume afterward similarly raises questions that she wisely avoids opting to answer. Aware of how exceptional this approach to character is in local cinema, Emmanuel Dela Cruz requires Angelo Ilagan, Jose’s scene partner, to maintain sympathetic naïveté throughout, while packaging the presentation in expressionist flourishes that serve to contrast with the depths of the abyss that Jose fearlessly plunges into.

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Sol Searching

Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2018
Director: Roman Perez Jr.
Screenwriters: Roman Perez Jr. & Norman Boquiren
Producer: Universal Harvester

Cast: Pokwang, Joey Marquez, Gilleth Sandico, JM Salvado, Conrado, Raffy Tejada, Raul Morit, LotLot Bustamante, Mayen Estañero, Troy Aquino, Francis Magundayao, Jelson Bay, Chokoleit, Lee O’Brian, Paulo Rodriguez, Sue Prado, Hector Macaso, Chad Kinis, DJ Maki Rena, DonJake Consuega, Vic Romano, Sky Labastilla

Elementary school teacher Sol collapses after swilling liquor on the job and stressing herself with the students’ usual infractions, but fails to recover. Her colleague and best friend Lorelai makes it her mission to ensure that Sol gets an extended wake, where her long-missing husband is expected to show up, followed by a decent burial. Unfortunately Sol is a non-entity in their small town, her family property grabbed by influential claimants, whom she in turn antagonized by agitating for farmers’ welfare. Initially only Bugoy, the student whom she saved from parental abuse, assists Lorelai, but eventually the other players in the school and town hall come around to help solve Lorelai’s predicament while ensuring that their personal agendas can also be pursued.

An entry that’s guaranteed to surprise close observers of contemporary Philippine cinema, since it left no traces behind save for a popularity prize at a now-defunct film festival and the usual positive notices automatically bestowed on anything that spells “indie production.” One possible clue as to the eventual critical dereliction visited on it lies in its throwback properties: its crude surface is reminiscent of celluloid-era hack work, while its thematic preoccupation with localized developmental issues creates disturbing associations with early martial-law media policy during the regime of the elder Ferdinand Marcos. Yet the achievement of Sol Searching lies in the way in which it subverts developmentalist requisites while deploying stouthearted wit and humor, in delineating a narrative that would be recognized as tragic in any context. The creative tension generated by the material encourages broad delivery from a cast that, large as it already is, increasingly proliferates toward the end; yet these risk-taking touches are substantiated by further forays into rewarding twists and revelations. A forward-looking throwback then, as good as it’s possible to get.

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Halaw

Alternate Title: Ways of the Sea
Additional Languages: Cebuano, Tausug, Zamboangueño Chavacano
Year of Release: 2010
Director & Screenwriter: Sheron R. Dayoc
Producers: Cinemalaya Foundation & Los Peliculas Linterna Studio

Cast: John Arcilla, Maria Isabel Lopez, Arnalyn Ismael, Ross-Ann Dalkis, Aljimar Hajilol, Rodaine Avalie, Hadja Nursiya Darangina, Edgardo Sumicad Jr., Randy Amodia, Hadji Amman Sahi, Nasri Tawasil, Anelyn Carino, Justies Love Matchon, Reden Silven, Fharwis Amil, Joel Bustamante, Maimuna Mutos

Hernand encounters a whole set of difficulties in organizing his latest attempt to transport Philippine natives illegally to Malaysia on a motorized outrigger boat, via the southern backdoor. Some of the young women he recruited to work as entertainers got cold feet and backed out, while Khalil, who’s in charge of one of their stopovers, wants to collect on a loan he lent out earlier. Mercedes, a veteran hospitality worker, joins their group and provides assurance and confidence to some of the understandably anxious women. Their passage through the Malaysian area of responsibility is fraught with danger, with their prospective country’s coast guard on the alert for their type of intrusion.

The reason why Halaw endures over the passage of time has to do with the several balancing acts it executes in delineating its passengers’ sea trip (in contrast with the road trips of New American Cinema); since there can only be pitifully few possible conclusions at the end, none of them worth accepting, the journey becomes the whole point of the narrative. The collection of passengers is distinguished by social gaps that each one tries to overcome, as casually and painlessly as possible, though this turns out to be easy only for the most privileged among them. At the head of their group are two Manila-bred Tagalog-speaking migrants (played by the “name” members of the cast): Hernand has his hands full ensuring that everyone gets on board, while Mercedes uses wilier ways to persuade the understandably reluctant female recruits. At the other extreme is a prepubescent girl, Daying, identified by the others as a Badjao native; she may be the only character who does not speak her native tongue, since no one else would understand her—but she also literally upstages everyone by performing the celebrated Pangalay dance. These rounds of simple, lighthearted distractions, including exchanges of gossip, jokes, and beauty tips, will be recognizable to any native confronted by the looming prospect of overseas alienation and danger. Most of the action increasingly takes place in the dark, since the group has to travel by night through pre-electrified islands. The film provides a visual counterpart to forestall the anguish that inevitably awaits, by enabling us to occasionally glimpse natural scapes of quiet beauty, with none more ravishing than the very destination that marks their transformation from citizens to illegal entities.

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Birdshot

Year of Release: 2016
Director: Mikhail Red
Screenwriters: Mikhail Red & Rae Red
Producers: Pelikulared, Tuko Film Productions, Buchi Boy Films

Cast: Mary Joy Apostol, Manuel Aquino, John Arcilla, Arnold Reyes, Dido de la Paz, Elora Españo, Ronnie Quizon, Rolando Inocencio, Suzette Ranillo, Angelica C. Ferro

Maya is taught by her father Diego, the sole tenant of a plot of farmland, to handle a gun. Against her father’s warning, she crosses the fence of a forest sanctuary and, once inside, shoots and kills an endangered Philippine eagle. In order to investigate the whereabouts of the missing animal, Domingo, a rookie police officer, is instructed by his station commander to drop his investigation of the disappearance of a bus of farmers who were planning to go to Manila to protest the harsh conditions that landowners, in collusion with corrupt government officials, were imposing on them. Domingo persists in following up the earlier case but is pressured into focusing on the disappearance of the eagle, leading him on a collision course with Maya and her father.

The promise that Birdshot’s filmmaking talent holds forth is a throwback to the heady days of the then still relatively benign years of the 1970s military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, when the country’s most talented aspirants could propose subject matter that implicitly criticized the existing political system by focusing on simple and focused narratives of survival. This resulted in a few instances of verisimilitude that martial-law authorities were quick to seize on, so Filipino filmmakers during the Second Golden Age managed (for the most part) to be subtle and ambivalent whenever their material came too close to mirroring real-life events. Such considerations no longer impinge on the generation of talents behind Birdshot, so its presentation of a local reality so insulated that the disappearance of a busload of politically significant passengers can be successfully hidden from investigators from the capital, not to mention global media, does not fully square with the traumatic real-life horror of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre. The narrative’s horrifically comic real-life incident of an older male peasant shooting down an endangered eagle to be able to cook tinola, or poultry stew with green papaya and chili leaves, is transformed here into the case of a young maiden similarly unaware of the consequence of killing wildlife—in a government sanctuary that she entered surreptitiously, against her father’s injunction. The plot opts instead to turn on character transformations that affect the protagonists: frustrated by his superior officers’ corruption, an idealistic policeman vents his anger on the wildlife-killing suspect’s father by torturing the latter; the daughter then responds to the police force’s violence by killing the policeman, presumably along with his ideals.

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Krimen: Kayo ang Humatol

English Translation: Crime: You Be the Judge
Year of Release: 1974
Director: Jun Raquiza
Screenwriter: Jose F. Sibal
From a story by Jun Raquiza
Producer: Ilocandia Productions

Cast: Jun Raquiza, Gina Pareño, Marianne de la Riva, Maribel Aunor, Shongho, Omar Camar, Tony Gosalvez, Edison Lee, Bob Breult, Eddie Villamayor, Susanna Navarro, Leila Hermosa, Nick Romano, Arnold Mendoza

Newly freed after a stint in jail, Angel discovers that his wallet has been lifted by underage pickpockets. He tracks the thieves to their mastermind Toni, a tomboy who dutifully returns what they stole. As Toni and her den of petty criminals begin to get fond of Angel, he hooks up with Myra, an affluent but rebellious daughter whose parents abandoned her to her vices. Myra consorts with a number of shady characters who drag Angel into their conflicts with her and even attack Toni and her wards, leaving Angel with no choice but to exact revenge.

A deceptively light-handed exercise involving the reconfiguration of generic tropes that has unexpectedly worn well through its half-century of being more admired than respected, Krimen: Kayo ang Humatol refutes Bienvenido Lumbera’s claim that a “new” Philippine cinema started only two years later.[1] Even if we discount the self-serving coincidence that the award-giving critics group he founded was launched in 1976, Lino Brocka’s impactful two-in-a-row juggernaut had already made its mark before then, and enjoyed healthy competition from Ishmael Bernal, Celso Ad. Castillo, Elwood Perez, and the unfortunate Jun Raquiza, who died too early and whose well-received debut, Dalawang Mukha ng Tagumpay (Two Faces of Triumph, 1973)—which featured Nora Aunor in a first of a series of reflexive projects—can no longer be found. Raquiza nearly pulls off the director-actor stunt in Krimen, but had a sufficiently healthy appreciation for good performances to allow Gina Pareño to run away with the presentation. Despite her Toni being saddled with the generic containment of being condemned and punished for her several transgressions against her gender and civic tasks, she navigates the potentially awkward transitions with remarkable aplomb and makes her presence in Krimen an indispensable precursor to her masterstroke in Jeffrey Jeturian’s Kubrador (The Bet Collector) over three decades later.

Note

[1] Bienvenido Lumbera’s periodization, which has no end date, appears in at least two of his most widely quoted sources: “New Forces in Contemporary Cinema” from Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema and Popular Culture (Index, 1984); and “Brocka, Bernal and Co.: The Arrival of New Filipino Cinema” from Re-Viewing Filipino Cinema (Anvil Publishing, 2011).

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Giliw Ko

English Translation: My Beloved
English Title: Beloved
Year of Release: 1939 / B&W
Director & Screenwrtier: Carlos Vander Tolosa
Producer: LVN Pictures

Cast: Fernando Poe, Mila del Sol, Fleur de Lis (Mona Lisa), Ben Rubio, Precioso Palma, Cecilio Joaquin, Vita Ortega, Nieves Obieta, SSS Trio, Kiko and Conde, Jose Garcia

Guia, a poor but high-spirited country maiden, is entranced by the prospect of wealth and fame via radio stardom. Her devoted childhood sweetheart, Jose, is considerate about her ambition, but dismayed when she starts falling for Antonio, the son of their landlord, who sponsors her trip to audition in Manila. She makes a splash in the big city but realizes that an urban sophisticate already lays claim to Antonio’s affections. When an impressed producer offers to further her singing career, she realizes she has to choose between love and success.

Giliw Ko may appear to be lightweight entertainment, brightened by the presence of Mila del Sol in a film-debut performance that remains as luminous as when it was first screened. It features charming melodies, earnestly delighting in love and the simple life, delivered with all the pleasure that only the best popular performers can bring to musical numbers that they know will gratify audiences in need of exceptional diversions. One may resolve to forget the viewing experience as soon as it ends, but history has been careful enough to add a couple of kicks: This was the first film of LVN Pictures, possibly the quintessential First Golden Age studio, and its polished production values were to persist through a quarter century of active filmmaking. More poignantly, it came out during a time when war clouds were looming in all corners of the world, with the Philippines poised to suffer severely—again!—from foreign incursion because of the presence of a previous invader that the forthcoming masters considered their enemy. No wonder that the most famous admirer of the film, President Manuel L. Quezon, demanded that the US President grant Philippine independence immediately so the country could be spared the ruthless anger of the Japanese Imperial Army.[1] Quezon died in US exile, the Japanese forces were vanquished via nuclear annihilation in their home country, a one-sided dependency relationship with the US was enforced after independence, and the country continues to stagger toward seemingly unattainable prosperity. All the more reason to be grateful that Giliw Ko endures as a reminder that at some point in the past, the dream of a happy existence did not seem too good to be true.

Note

[1] Addressed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Manuel L. Quezon’s correspondence said that, because the US was prioritizing its war commitments in Europe, the Philippines should be allowed to declare its neutrality as the Pacific equivalent of Switzerland. William Manchester, in his biography of Douglas MacArthur, described “this historic communication [as] the first peal of the Third World liberty bell” (American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, Dell, 1978, page 281). This insight can be related to Vivek Chibber’s provocative assessment of the Vietnam War, where he argues that, despite its pronouncement, the US did not so much fear the domino effect of the spread of Communism, but rather the specter of neutrality, where “other countries will take inspiration from a successful nationalist endeavor and decide on a neutral path” (“Not the Fall of Saigon—Its Liberation,” interview with Melissa Naschek, Jacobin, April 30, 2025, jacobin.com/2025/04/vietnam-war-communists-us-empire).

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Pauwi Na

English Translation: On the Way Home
English Title: Pedicab
Year of Release: 2016 / Color with B&W
Director: Paolo Villaluna
Screenwriters: Paolo Villaluna & Ellen Ramos
“Inspired by a news feature article which appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on September 7, 2003,” per opening credit title
Producer: Universal Harvester

Cast: Bembol Roco, Cherry Pie Picache, Meryll Soriano, Jerald Napoles, Jess Mendoza, Chai Fonacier, Bimbo Bautista, Jack the Dog, Shamaine Buencamino, Melinda Tan de Guzman, John Paul Dragin, Emmanuel Dela Cruz, Marichu Belarmino-Cariño, Bombi Plata, Raul Morit, Jam Nhaze Canciller

Suffering from a cough that he knows will never get better because of his smoking habit, Pepe convinces his family to ride all the way back to their rural hometown by using rickshaws. His opportunity arrives when he’s able to swipe a packet of money from one of his regular customers. His wife Remedios objects initially but agrees that their hand-to-mouth existence is no way to live. Their eldest son JP earns ocasionally from pickpocketing and stealing, nicking a smaller motorized rickshaw to complement his father’s pedal-driven pedicab. JP’s wife Isabel is blind, heavy with child, and regarded as screwy for occasionally conversing with someone she addresses as Jesus. Their younger daughter Pina is a street vendor who plans to hook an AFAM (originally “a foreigner assigned in Manila,” currently any white American male) in the red-light district; she goes along, bringing their dog Kikay, although she easily complains when she gets hungry or wants to bathe. They encounter difficulties with traffic rules on the expressway leading southward and endure bouts of hunger. When they find a hand-pumped well at the side of a street, they take the opportunity to wash and fill up their containers. A woman comes up and demands that they pay for the water, and a priest intervenes to pacify the lady and offer the family a place to rest.

Nearly a decade since its emergence, Pauwi Na has lost none of its ability to masterfully delineate a national condition thrown into stark relief by the attempt of members of a typical Philippine family, trapped in desperate straits, to better their condition. A major factor toward accomplishing this tour de force is the assemblage of what must be the most impressive ensemble of performers in the present millennium, each of them resolute in depicting the multilayered suffering of the most neglected citizens around, while ensuring that their character’s basic humanity remains perceptible. Unsurprisingly, the query that one of these players raises toward the end, whether their story will ever have a happy ending, has already been answered by the mere fact that it has to be asked in the first place. (Felicitously, the narrative’s source material appears to have a less downbeat resolution—but then the family traveled even farther, to another island in fact, becoming a national sensation as a result, so one should not begrudge them such a closure.) The means by which PN morphs into a road movie worth the trip is the standard decent-artist approach of leavening heartbreaking tragedy with irony and humor, but it distinguishes itself by refusing the sanctification which is commonly bestowed on these subjects. Fantasy passages that interrupt the plot suggest how the family members, in a better world, might have handled the challenges they confront; but in acknowledging how old-fashioned and conventional these notions are, the film executes these excerpts in early-cinema style—black and white, slow-motion, actors facing the audience, accompanied by achingly evocative native love songs. In the film’s actual world, the men of the family are not above two-timing friends and strangers alike, much as the barely mature daughter casually contemplates sex work, and the mother opts for an inhumane option in order to assuage everyone’s hunger. An even more daring move is literalizing the Jesus that the family’s blind daughter-in-law keeps addressing (no spoilers, since he shows up from the beginning): he dresses up like a well-groomed slum resident save for the crown of thorns on his head and spouts contemporary lingo. When his real-life counterpart shows up, he tells his collocutor that things will take a turn for the worse, a warning that surprises her as much as it places the audience on alert, inasmuch as the parish priest the family meets initially behaves exactly as anyone would expect. A final symbolic touch, the small plastic chamber pot from which emergency funds are drawn to save the family’s grandchild, should be no surprise since we already know from early on what it looks like; what’s remarkable is how it transforms from a light semihumorous prop into an arbiter of survival, when its contents, though impressing the character who witnesses it, will suffice in covering only one life. How long before this item, alongside even the film itself, becomes a relic of a better-forgotten past, doesn’t seem to be a possibility for both characters and viewers, which is the far less laughable tragedy.

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