In Praise Of The Emergence Of Two Competent Female Filmmakers, Antoinette Jadaone And Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, And The Good Films They Did

WOMEN DIRECTORS are very few so we’re happy with the emergence of two new very talented female filmmakers: Antoinette Jadaone and Sigrid Andrea Bernardo. Antoinette was all over the place last week as three of her films were being shown simultaneously in theatres: “Beauty in a Bottle”, “Relaks, It’s Just Pag-ibig” and the Cinema One entry, “That Thing Called Tadhana” which won the audience award.

Sigrid first made her presence felt in last year’s CineFilipino filmfest, “Huling Cha Cha ni Anita”, which won best actress for child star Terry Malvar and several best supporting actress plums for Angel Aquino. Her entry in Cinema One this year is “Lorna”, the most satisfying local film for us this year after Jun Lana’s “Mga Kuwentong Barbero”. And the title role portrayal of Shamaine Centenera Buencamino as Lorna tops for us the already first rate performance of Eugene Domingo in “Barbero”. That she lost to Angelica Panganiban as best actress in Cinema One is truly for us an unforgivable mortal sin. We’re sure she’ll be vindicated in other award giving bodies next year.

Going back to Antoinette, the best among her three films is “Tadhana”, which is obviously inspired by the “Before Sunset/Sunrise” films starring Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy. This is not your usual “kilig” romantic movie as it offers serious ruminations about a lot of things. Angelica is Mace, who’s grieving over the death of an 8-year old relationship. She meets Anthony (JM de Guzman) and they take a road trip to the highlands of Baguio. Along the way, they talk about their lives and get to know each other better as we the viewers get to know them both. It’s very engagingly written and both Angelica and JM are endearing and riveting. Their karaoke scene alone is already worth the price of admission. It’s so genuinely touching.

Her next most successful film is “Relaks”, co-directed with Irene Villamor, a teen romance that is unabashedly apologetic in announcing from the start that it is all about love and it’s a beautiful feeling. Sofia Andres is Sari, a sheltered girl who’s homeschooled by her parents (Pia Magalona and Earl Ignacio). Earl is an artist and the film starts with a class of uppity spokening-dollar kids from an international school visiting his place in Angono.

One of the students is Josh (Inigo Zobel), a chick boy who leaves his phone behind accidentally. Sari gets it in their own version of “cute meet”. A hopeless romantic, Sari forces Josh to join her to a trip to Leyte to meet Elias, whose love letter she found and makes her believe she’ll find her own true love under a blue moon. But Josh’, girlfriend, Cupcake (Ericka Villonco) follows them, and Sari’s own best friend, Kiko (Julian Estrada), who lives in Singapore, suddenly pops up to join them and put some conflict into the budding relationship. But you know all along that Sofia will still end up with Inigo since he’s the son of the film’s producer, Piolo Pascual, who also pops up in a cameo as Elias.

The film moves swiftly and there’s no boringga factor despite the flimsy material, thanks to the good performances of Sofia as the free spirited Sari, Smokey Manaloto as addled Josh’s driver, Alessandra de Rossi as a bus passenger crying over a lost love (her scene with Sofia that makes fun of her being “taga-UP” is really hilarious) and Ericka who’s really effective as the annoyingly “maarte” caricaturish Cupcake. Sadly, Inigo will always suffer in comparison to his dad, who’s definitely much handsomer than him. Piolo was already oozing with incandescent star quality in his first film. “Lagarista”, something that cannot be said about Inigo. What’s worse is that, on screen, Julian Estrada is better looking and more appealing than him. But of course they cannot switch the roles. Maybe Julian should ask his own dad to also produce a movie for him.

Take note that James Reid is an extra in this flick as one of Inigo’s classmates, which means this was made long before Reid hit it big in “Diary ng Panget”. And now, Inigo is just supporting Reid in their new movie for Viva.

Jadaone’s least successful movie is “Beauty in a Bottle”, which is meant to be a satire on the beauty business and the obsessive quest of ordinary mortals for beauty. There are three main characters: Assunta de Rossi as an aging advertising exec, Angelica Panganiban as an overweight actress and Angeline Quinto as a plane Jane so insecure of her looks. There are scenes that will make you smile but not one to make you really laugh out loud. Most of the jokes are the type that may sound so funny while you’re exchanging ideas during a brain storming session or a story con, but they fall quite flat on the big screen. Assunta and Angelica are both splendid in their respective roles, but their competence is not enough to save the movie from its weaknesses. The main fault is in the fact that the three separate stories do not really coalesce into a cohesive whole. There should have been an element that connects them more satisfyingly with each other for the entire movie to be more affecting. In the end, the film makes fun of actresses who have Botox injections, with Angelica no longer capable of showing any convincing emotion on her face. What really amazes us here is that it was made with the full cooperation of Dr. Vicki Belo who administers such Botox injections to movie stars.

Next time: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s “Lorna”.