Bagong Bayani is the underdog of the two films about Flor Contemplacion: made in two months on a shoestring budget, it's been plagued by unaccountable production delays (due to pressure from Viva, perhaps?), and so far no theater has agreed to release it, so the closest you might get to it is through this review. Which is a filthy shame: Bagong Bayani is the best Filipino film since Orapronobis in the late 1980's. Instead of a career devoted to skin flicks, Aguiluz sharpened his teeth on documentaries. He pours that not inconsiderable experience into this film: parts of actual interviews mix deftly with dramatizations of specific episodes; the outside and inside of Changi prison were filmed with hidden cameras (Aguiluz reportedly dressed as a turbaned Indian to film the prison gates; when a guard spotted him, he literally had to run to save the film footage). From the first frame onwards it's obvious that this is not going to be your usual Carlos J. Caparas massacre flick. Flor Contemplacion (Helen Gamboa) is led, bare-footed, to the gallows; she is followed by a restless camera, seeking her out from every angle--hand-held, tilted, low-angled, panning. The execution itself happens swiftly in a series of shots so fluidly cut they have the smoothness and finality of a hanged man's sperm emission. The film shifts back to Flor's interrogation: she is forced to stand for hours, deprived of food and water, while the CID officer (an intensely convincing Pen Medina) strikes her. I was told that this was the first time Helen Gamboa gave a real performance. If so, it was worth the wait; Gamboa is riveting as she shows us the final stages of exhaustion without resorting to the standard excess hysterics of Filipino acting. It's said that Chanda Romero wants to sue this film, because the part of Flor was promised to her. But her performance as Delia Maga is no disappointment. She's always been an extremely talented actress, and her acting has never felt more honest and open than here. The scene where she discovers her ward drowned is especially fine: having a good idea as to what her employer might do to her, she picks up the phone and literally has to force herself to call him; you can see the terror in her trembling hands. But her best moments are spent with her fellow actress. Romero and Gamboa establish an easy but close rapport; we sense the loneliness that draws them together. The fact that their employers allow them to see each other about once a week only strengthens the tie. Aguiluz underlines the enforced isolation by showing us Flor's room: a tiny cubicle nearly filled up by a single cot, where a hi-tech TV set that must have cost a month's wages has to sit on the room's one folding chair. Flor, in being convicted, had only exchanged one prison for another, a living death for a real death. One shot actually illustrates this visually: as Flor climbs the apartment stairs to meet Delia Maga for the last time, the camera follows her past darkened corridors and bright windows as if she was fading in and out, her existence uncertain. One of the film's finest sequences takes place inside Changi prison, where Flor meets Virginia Parumog. Their early scenes have a deliciously tentative feel, as Virginia tries to draw Flor out of her torture-and-drug-induced shell, and their friendship begins to firm. I have rarely seen acting--Filipino acting--as delicately played as this. As examples of female bonding, these short scenes (plus those between Flor and Delia) put the more expensive and supposedly more talented cast of Little Women to shame. Irma Adlawan as Virginia gives an astonishing performance: warm, intelligent, deeply compassionate. She senses Flor's enormous need, and her strength and sympathy grow to match that need. In one scene, Virginia reads a note smuggled to her by Flor. While Gamboa narrates Flor's suffering, Adlawan suggests--by the inwardness of her crouch, the bend of her neck--how deeply she feels Flor's words. Aguiluz clothes her in shadows, implying Virginia's total immersion in Flor's state of mind, a state of near-total despair. It's a tribute to the director and both actresses that with the simplest of devicesa crouched posture, a bit of darkness, and a voice-over--they bring us totally inside the souls of these two women. It's instructive to see how The Flor Contemplacion Story and Bagong Bayani stage identical scenes: when the children visit their mother in Flor, Lamangan plunks a glass sheet wide as a panoramic movie screen between them, the better to see Nora act; Aguiluz chooses verisimilitude, using a cramped little barred window. This effectively forces the children to contort uncomfortably to see her face, making you think: they aren't even allowed a good look at their mother. In Flor, Lamangan forces Nora to dominate the scenes; in Bayani, Aguiluz has them talk as normal people in their situation talk: greetings first, then important business, then small talk, then despairing silence. The progression happens quietly and naturally; finally Flor and her children are reduced to pressing their palms to each other through the glass. The mix of dramatization and documentary recalls The Thin Blue Line, about the arrest and conviction of an innocent man for murder. Line attempted to deconstruct events, repeating them over and over again until you see the contradictions in the prosecution's case against the accused; Bayani assumes Flor's innocence, giving the Singaporean version only a token glance. It might have helped Bayani's case to adopt a more objective tone, giving time to both sides (but then, we wouldn't have all these wonderful performances). As it is, Bayani doesn't seem concerned with the question of guilt so much as with depicting Flor's life, at which it succeeds, vividly. The use of documentary footage broadens the implications of her story, turning it into the story of all OCWs abroad. From The Manila Chronicle, June 95
