Babae sa bubungang lata, Ang (1998)

Regisseur:

Mario O'Hara

Drehbuchautoren:

Agapito Joaquin (play)
Mario O'Hara (screenplay)

Premierendatum:

7. Oktober 1998 (Philippines)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Sex | Cemetery | Sexy Pinay | Billboard Painter | Celebrity Has Been

Filmpreise:

2 wins & 2 nominations

Nutzerkommentare:

A farewell to the Filipino film industry

Besetzung

Aya Medel	...	Toying
Mike Magat	...	Maldo
Anita Linda	...	Amapola
Renzo Cruz	...	Eric
übrige Besetzung in alphabetischer Reihenfolge:
Cita Astals
Allen Dizon
Edwin O'Hara
Randy Ramos
Frank Rivera	...	Nitoy
William Romero

Alternativ:

Woman on a Tin Roof (International: English title)

Länge:

103 Min

Produktionsland:

Philippines

Sprache:

Tagalog | Filipino

Farbe:

Farbe

Firma:

Good Harvest Productions

A farewell to the Filipino film industry

Babae Sa Bubungang Lata (Girl on A Tin Roof) isn't about films so much as it is about the people who make them. Not the directors or producers or stars (as in Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 or Francois Truffaut's Day For Night), but the little people on the marginal fringe. It's based on a play written by Agapito Joaquin back in the 70's, a little chamber drama about an actor Maldo (Mike Magat) and his faithless wife, Toying (Aya Medel). O'Hara, in adapting for screen, has changed the actor to a stuntman, and added Amapola, an aging actress (Anita Linda); Nitoy, a billboard painter (Frank Rivera); his stuntman lover, Eric (Renzo Ruiz) and others. The result feels less like a chamber play and more like Ishmael Bernal's Manila by Night, or Robert Altman's Nashville--a multiple-story, multiple-character film.

O'Hara tells his story with deceptive ease. He is a master of the understated drama, of daily life narrated in a manner absolutely true to daily life. He does on screen what Hemingway aspired to do on paper: keep the flame of his prose, like an alcohol burner, low, low, almost to the point of winking out--until it explodes.

O'Hara works in the neorealist tradition of Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini (a tradition Lino Brocka belonged to), but there's also a touch of Gothic in him. He stages much of his story inside the Manila North Cemetery, a vast landscape of tombs and crosses and silently weeping angels, where most of his characters--so poor they can't afford a house--live. It's a marvelous visual conceit, a brilliant coup de theatre: crawling among the mausoleums and monuments of famous dead presidents and statesmen, O'Hara's little people struggle to survive.

There are flaws (you can't expect perfection in a US$60,000 production)--a few scenes out-of-focus, a certain amount of narrative confusion--but they are almost laughably unimportant. The clumsiness actually becomes part of the movie's texture, of its visual style--as if this sad, desperate picture were made by the same sad, desperate people the picture is about.

I talk of Altman, Bernal, Brocka, De Sica, Fellini, Hemingway, Rosellini, Truffaut--great artists all--but I do O'Hara a disservice; the picture stands perfectly well on its own. Watching the film, you feel that he has the unique ability to assume a Godlike view of his characters--apprehending them in their painfully frail, all-too-human entirety--and at the same time be down on earth beside them, rooting for them, loving them intensely. It's the source of greatness of his very best works, from Bulaklak Sa City Jail (Flowers Of The City Jail) to Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God) to this film.

Made in about ten shooting days and for a fifth of the budget of an ordinary film, Babae Sa Bubungang Lata is an eloquent repudiation of every film that has ever cost over US$250,000.00 (the normal budget for a Filipino production), with all their waste and bloat and arty pretentiousness. At the same time, it's a sad farewell to the business O'Hara has worked and struggled in for over twenty years. `The industry is dying,' he seems to be telling us, a message we've heard before; but the rich ambivalence in his voice, the dark, deeply felt tones of anger and regret make the message unbearably moving. You almost feel that the industry doesn't deserve a tribute as lovely as this picture. It's possibly the finest Filipino film ever made in the past twelve years.