Filipino classics return to big screen

Chito Roño’s “Kailan Ka Magiging Akin”                                   Mario O’Hara’s “Tatlong Ina, Isang Anak”

A new and welcome initiative at Ayala Malls Cinemas sees them partnering with ABS-CBN Film Archives and Restoration to bring audiences “A Rewind.”

Every month, two Filipino film classics will be screened over several days at select participating Ayala Malls Cinemas, including Ayala Malls The 30th, Ayala Malls Cloverleaf, Ayala Malls Fairview Terraces, Ayala Malls MarQuee Mall, and Ayala Malls Legazpi.

For this debut month, the selections are 1987’s “Tatlong Ina, Isang Anak” by Mario O’Hara and 1991’s “Kailan Ka Magiging Akin” by Chito Roño. The restored films will be shown from April 9 to April 13 with tickets priced at P180 and P160 for students. It’s a great opportunity for today’s audiences to discover or relive some national cinema classics that we’ve heard of or read about but haven’t seen because they can be difficult to find.

READ: QCinema to screen restored classics

At a special screening to inaugurate the initiative, “Kailan Ka Magiging Akin” was shown to an eager audience, many of whom were seeing it for the first time. Starring Janice de Belen, Vivian Velez, Eddie Gutierrez, Carmina Villaroel, Gabby Concepcion, Charo Santos, Gina Alajar, Julio Diaz, Lady Lee, and Cherry Pie Picache, it’s a star-studded tour de force, a sprawling melodrama that feels like an epic even though it’s only two hours. It won Best Picture and Best Actress (for Janice de Belen) at the Manila Film Festival.

Product of its time

Janice de Belen plays Dolor, a nurse who becomes a nursemaid in the employ of her colleague and superior Jaime (Gutierrez), as he and his family take care of his cousin Adul (Velez)’s newly adopted baby. Though the baby’s mother (Alajar) has misgivings, her husband (Diaz) is adamant. Dolor’s boyfriend Ramil (Concepcion) isn’t happy that her new job is consuming all her time. Adul has to go to America to see about some problems with her businesses there, but legal issues prevent her from returning to her daughter. Meanwhile, Jaime’s lush of a wife, Leila (Santos) is incensed at the intrusion and imposition on her family, and mostly takes it out on her and Jaime’s own adopted daughter, Tess (Villaroel).

This movie has everything: It opens with a tense scene out of a medical thriller before becoming a tense domestic drama about alcohol addiction and family distress, with bits of romance and maternal yearning, then switches to found family mode before a dramatic betrayal and lies, leading to a mall chase in Robinsons Galleria, a raid on a small community, a kidnapping, a fight scene, before ultimately culminating in a sequence from a courtroom drama.

It’s certainly a product of its time. None of the male characters come across particularly well; almost all are selfish or immature but get some form of redemption by the end. Roño displays his capacity to switch between genres, which will serve him in future endeavors (hopefully included in “A Rewind”).

The blocking in a particular garden scene between Adul and Jaime is particularly noteworthy, Adul literally moving into light and shadow as the truth is revealed. Another scene of note is the dance between Dolor and Ramil in a stylized empty hall, lit by a single source in a dreamy haze.

Part of the fun is in clocking the fashions of the time, and spotting the differences in landscape, but with powerhouse acting and some choice lines from screenwriter Mia Concio, “Kailan Ka Magiging Akin” proves a memorable experience, and we hope to see many more in future installments of “A Rewind.”— INQ