‘Etiquette for Mistresses’ strikes a breezy chord

CHIU, BARRETTO, AQUINO, CALZADO AND CRAB. Absorbing tales, appealing portrayals.

YOU WON’T find mistresses as appealing and absorbing as the feisty coven Chito Roño gathers in his screen version of Jullie Yap Daza’s “instructive” tome, “Etiquette for Mistresses.”

Anchored by a zippy tone that recalls the breezy sensibility of Ishmael Bernal’s 1984 ensemble comedy, “Working Girls,” the film and its lead actresses’ portrayals aren’t perfect, but they’re never less than compelling—because the true-to-life tales they mirror strike a frothy and fizzy chord that often manages to go for the jugular.

As the book’s winking kicker suggests, it shares hard-earned lessons, presented like bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation, that clueless wives—and the delusional kind who chooses to conveniently look the other way—can take valuable and practical tips from!

The quirky quintet of impulsive advertising executive Chloe Zamora (Claudine Barretto), lawyer Stella Garcia (Iza Calzado), neophyte Ina del Prado (Kim Chiu), sinfully rich Charley Mariquit (Cheena Crab) and sensible caterer Georgia Torres (Kris Aquino) can take a hit for their amoral (and immoral) lifestyles, but it’s hard to find fault with the heart-over-mind decisions that rule their contentious actions.

As Roño efficiently juggles five stories in a cohesive piece of astute yarn-spinning and balancing act, he cleverly avoids distasteful moralizing, but carefully lifts the veil off each protagonist’s unique situation with knowing clarity—and, yes, foreseeable doom and gloom.

However acquiescent a mistress appears to be to a life shrouded in mystery and domestic secrecy, living on borrowed time rarely guarantees a Happily Ever After payoff.

These women aren’t always the needy damsels in distress (or disgrace) like the character Kim, appropriately cast as the kooky but emotionally fragile neophyte kerida, portrays. —There are others who are just as financially stable as the two-timing men who keep them.

Best performer

Efficiently channeling her personal demons, the award-worthy Claudine is the quintet’s best performer. She is “bigger” than we thought she’d be, but the extra heft gives her exceptional turn the vulnerability and edge her character demands, as a woman continually pining for the love of the duplicitous man (Eddie Gutierrez) who has found a younger and thinner plaything Arci Muñoz).

One of the movie’s biggest draws is Barretto’s scene with the seasoned Pilar Pilapil, who spits her piercing, lived-in, three-sentence dialogue like the all-knowing “victim” she portrays.

Barretto is even better in her curiously darkly lit confrontation scene with the credible but uneven Kris, whose know-it-all character is tasked to teach new mistress Kim how to “toe the line.” Very much in character, Kris barks her orders like they’re spiels from a teleprompter.

Cool and collected, Iza’s Stella never cracks under pressure—even when the life of her beloved is on the line. She’s a woman aware of the dire consequences of her actions—and embraces them with as much passion as she dedicates to her “profession.” The lovely actress isn’t given as much screen time as the others, but she proves that a fine performance isn’t compromised by the quantity of scenes she appears in.

Newbie Cheena Crab doesn’t steal her costars’ thunder, but acquits herself well as a taipan’s kept woman. She spends her man’s riches like there’s no tomorrow, but she splurges on expensive artworks—a better investment to secure her future—when the novelty of her “branded” material whims wears off.

In Roño’s able hands, the quintet’s intersecting tales vividly come to life, the awkward “kidnapping” sequence notwithstanding—but, it’s  difficult to suspend disbelief that a sorority of mistresses could regularly gather like a pack of wolves to consolidate their “fleeting” gains and cry over their hard-fought losses—as they wait for their absentee paramours to shower them with the temporary love and “borrowed” attention they demand. But, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction!

Moreover, while we understand the storytelling tack that explains the relative “absence” of the men in these women’s lives, it’s hard to tell “fair and objective” stories if you take the crucial perspective of the other half out of the inflammable “romantic” equation!