By Noel Vera
MARIO O’HARA’s follow-up project after his World War 2 epic Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, 1976) and producer Armida Siguion-Reyna’s follow-up production after the Gabriela Silang musical Dung-aw (Dirge, 1975) co-starring Mario Montenegro was the 1977 film Mga Bilanggong Birhen: yet another period drama, set this time during the American Occupation of the Philippines, and also starring Mr. Montenegro.
Call the film O’Hara’s The Magnificent Ambersons: after his impressive sophomore feature O’Hara must have felt the pressure to deliver an even more sumptuous third, with broader historical sweep and a larger cast of characters. For once he had the resources — Armida spared no expenses, throwing in a period-accurate car (a 1924 Chrysler if I’m not mistaken), a sprawling hacienda complete with elaborately laced beds and furnishings and religious statuary, even an extraordinary spinning overhead contraption designed to fan the family’s long dining-room table during hot midday lunches.
The film (also written by O’Hara) operates on three levels: first as an allegory for the American oppression of Filipinos — which doesn’t seem so bad (the Americans gave us modern sewerage, a modern water supply, a modern road network among others) until Kapitan Pablo (Mario Montenegro) points out that the Americans had put in charge the same people who have always been in charge: the upper classes.
Leading us to the second level, the upper class’ oppression of the lower — and here we see Señor Juan Sagrada (Leroy Salvador) being offered a farmer’s daughter in exchange for a goat. Things have improved considerably when you think about it; during Spanish times Señor Juan would have just taken the daughter without offering anything in return.
That said, equating a girl to a goat leads us to the third level — on which the film works most often and best — the male oppression of women. Celina (Alma Moreno) and her sister Milagros (Trixia Gomez) are the eponymous virgins, and almost immediately on Celina’s arrival she’s promised to someone in marriage. The girls have little to say about it of course; the marriages have been arranged with whoever might help the family best. God forbid that one should fall in love the way Milagros does, with the son of a political opponent; as punishment she’s locked away in the basement, where her feelings of frustration loneliness and rage have simmered for so long they’ve driven her mad.
The oppression is directed across generations; Celina and Milagros’ mother Felipa (Armida Siguion-Reyna) had already committed the unforgivable crime of falling in love with Pablo, who in turn is guilty of the unforgivable crime of 1.) being poor and 2.) killing one of the folks responsible for keeping his family poor. Felipa is not shut away in the basement and she’s not crazy, but the way she glides through the mansion and gazes at the many selves she can see gazing back from her many-paned mirror you sense her state of mind isn’t all that far from her daughter Milagros’.
Despite the multilevel approach the film is hardly schematic; the chief oppressor isn’t Señor Juan — a spineless hedonist — but his mother Doña Sagrada (Monang Carvajal) who rules the family with a cast-iron fist. You wonder how she can do such a thing; you marvel at the perversity of a society that can turn woman against woman, mother against daughter and granddaughter for the sake of family unity, to preserve and improve position and power.
As Doña Sagrada Ms. Carvajal is an astringent wonder, spitting out Castilian phrases and curses in a tone and manner that compels obedience, whether you understand Spanish or not. As her weakling son Señor Juan (think a brutish more rapacious George Minafer), Leroy Salvador inspires both contempt and sympathy — contempt for his undersized cojones and outsized appetites, sympathy for the fact that he can’t help how he is, he was raised that way; the possibility of a life where he and his family are not the privileged elite seems inconceivable, and for him a crippling notion.
As Felipa, Armida Siguion-Reyna is a revelation. She’s hardly the highborn queen she’s played for most of her career, all regal cheekbones and flashing eyes; instead, framed by a dark cascade of curls, she’s haunted fragile quiet. Her Felipa is a repository not just of memories but memories of women’s suffering — her daughters and others — throughout the years, throughout the islands, and this brimming simmering caldera of pain she carries has stricken not blessed her with a grave unsettling beauty.
Ryan Cayabyab’s piano score lends Felipa her sharp poignant highlights; Romy Vitug’s amber candleglow and dustmoted sunbeams illuminate her as if from within. O’Hara’s script fleshes out Felipa’s desperate loneliness, then shoots it from behind floridly ornamented barred windows and against heavily carved oaken doors — symbols not of how the upper class keeps the world shut out but of how the class keeps its members shut in. The director believes apparently that a lily is loveliest when bruised and forlorn, and does his level best to present Armida accordingly.
Which makes the film’s production history all the more puzzling — why did O’Hara leave before he finished? What did he manage to accomplish and what did director Romy Suzara (who took over) add afterwards? When you see what’s already there — the lush design, the breathtaking performances, the beyond-gorgeous music and cinematography — you mourn for what might have been, the awkward, all-too-apparent flaws (the editing, which O’Hara didn’t supervise, leaves much to be desired). This could have been a greater more emotionally devastating film than Tatlong Taong; that it isn’t is high tragedy.
