Mercedes Cabral captivates as a mail-order bride in Danish drama

MERCEDES Cabral and Jens Albinus

Mercedes Cabral portrays a mail-order bride in Frederikke Aspock’s compelling domestic drama, “Rosita,” which will be screened again at the tail end of the Danish Film Festival at the Shangri-La mall tonight:

Rosita (Cabral) arrives in a snow-covered fishing village in Yutland, located at the northern tip of Denmark, where Ulrik (Jens Albinus) awaits. Like most men in the hamlet, the lonely widower is stoic and hardworking—and perpetually smelling of fish.

Ulrik lives with his son, Johannes (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard), a canning factory worker. Their humdrum life is turned upside down with the arrival of their lovely, brown-skinned newcomer, who came to marry Ulrik.

Initially skeptical of the ravishing Filipino visitor’s presence, Johannes soon finds himself drawn to the dash of sunshine and warmth Rosita brings to their windswept town. It doesn’t take long for Johannes to fall for Rosita, who relies on the young man’s English skills to communicate with Ulrik, who only speaks Danish.

Rosita shares a secret with Johannes: She works part-time cleaning ships when Ulrik, who disapproves of the idea, is at work. Her situation gets dicier when her betrothed man’s attractive son kisses her—and she reluctantly kisses him back!

But when Rosita begins rejecting the young man’s amorous advances, Johannes discloses to Ulrik that his fiancée has an 8-year-old son in the Philippines she needs to support financially. Will the heretofore undisclosed revelation stop Ulrik from marrying Rosita?

MIKKEL Boe Folsgaard (left) and Albinus

The film, which won for Aspock the best director prize at the Moscow International Film Festival last year, is a character-driven drama made more compelling by its director’s astute ability to empathetically dramatize with gimlet-eyed clarity the protagonists’ inability to communicate with each other.

Despite the paucity of lines, the film brings enlightening insight as it zeroes in on its themes depicting alienation more than the excessively romanticized Filipino diaspora and migration tackled ad nauseam in local cinema. Its dramatic scenes may be emotionally charged, but they’re never mawkish.

Albinus delivers a heartbreaking performance that reeks with desolation—you only need to gaze at his eyes to realize how lonely he is. He finds the perfect foil in Folsgaard, who challenges Albinus’ passivity. The latter is exceptional for dramatizing his character’s restrained restlessness and “measured” recklessness.

More than Albinus and Folsgaard’s dramatic achievements, however, the movie really belongs to Mercedes Cabral, whose potent presence is the fuel driving Aspock’s cinematic vehicle. With carefully calibrated thespic strokes, Cabral nurtures and brings to life a continually evolving, multilayered character.

It takes Rosita sometime to find her footing, but when she finally hits her stride, she quickly evolves into the confident woman who finally finds her voice in a strange land far away from the dust and stultifying heat of her hometown in the tropics. But, is Rosita truly better off in her ice-cold new surrounding?