Significant reminder of Charo Santos’ thespic edge

CHARO Santos

News about Charo Santos’ comeback to film acting has prompted film buffs to hark back to her past starrers, the better to “reappreciate” her thespic achievement through the years.

Last Wednesday, June 15, they were aided significantly in this regard by the screening on the Cinema One movie channel of “Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan,” by Maryo J. delos Reyes.

The film was a particularly significant reminder of Charo’s thespic edge, because the entire, cross-generational film was built around her character.

She started out as a teenage girl in the 1940s, whose faithless lover left her high and dry—and pregnant. The fact that it was wartime made her life and prospects much worse, especially after her mother killed herself.

Despite these and many other travails through succeeding years, the film’s protagonist not just survived but prospered, having learned her bitter lessons all too well.

She ended up being a popular legislator’s mistress—and later, his wife. And more pertinently, she didn’t depend on him but built up a huge business conglomerate of her own.

Instructively however, her personal life was a shambles. All sorts of tragedies occurred, some of her children and grandchildren deceived her or failed to live up to her demanding expectations, and a couple even plotted her assassination—not once but thrice!

In painting such a bleak picture of the “fruits” of Charo’s character’s “desperate-survivor” view of life, the film ends up as a cautionary viewing experience for moviegoers.

“What doth it profit a woman if”—etc.

Given such a long, intricate, sermonizing and cross-generational scenario, the ambitious film starring a slew of stars occasionally becomes a victim of its excessively convoluted intentions—and pretensions.

In particular, the many young starlets who play the protagonist’s grandchildren turn in surprisingly and sometimes even shockingly shallow portrayals.

For instance, when a bomb intended to kill Charo’s character explodes and gravely injures her, her relatives, either guilty or innocent, are shown “discussing” it as if they were talking about a relative stranger.

However, the key point to this retrospective “reappreciation” of “Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan” is our observation that despite all of the confusion, convolution and shallowness happening all around her, Charo is able to keep a strong focus on her character and her development through the tumultuous “chapters” of her long and turbulent life.

Charo’s achievement is impressive, so we’re heartened to hope that her long-awaited comeback vehicle, Lav Diaz’s “Ang Babaeng Humayo,” will be truly exceptional.

It’s also exciting to note that in some scenes in “Tapakan,” Charo daringly engages in some forthrightly passionate scenes, making her character bracingly raw and accessible.

All too often these days, the now “iconic” Charo has been “elevated” so high that she doesn’t appear to be capable of urgently realistic and “raw” portrayals. “Tapakan” assures us that she can do all that—and more.