Bata bata paano ka ginawa?

The movie, based on Lualhati Bautista's novel, is a thoroughly entertaining story of a woman trying to be herself. Once again, Santos gave a very convincing performance as a woman so brave and modern but still fragile.

The screenplay is both dull and banal, while the musical score is absolutely hideous. However, the film has been directed with skill and polish by Chito S Rono. With "Bata, Bata..." he delivers a competent film about something we've seen so many times before - a Filipina woman who is trying her best to be a good mother and a career-minded person, both at the same time.

A fine supporting cast (specially Martinez), some dashes of humour, and an inspiring story about an ordinary woman living in a hypocritical world.

Lualhati Bautista's award-winning novel was adapted to the big-screen with brilliant results: the casting (specially Mayor Vilma Santos as the strong-willed Leah Bustamante) is perfect; Bautista's script is filled with comic and dramatic undertones. 8 year-old Serena Dalrymple provided most of the laughs as the innocent child who serves as Leah's mirror of her personality. Everything in the film is a labor of love and art, and it deserves to be a classic.

Lea is strong and weak. She is hungry in love. Love, sex and their outcome - children - are all indispensable for her life. Vilma Santos acts such a woman so well. Her acting is outstanding here.

To be honest, the story setting is not easily acceptable for me, a Japanese. Couples may live separately when both of wife and husband has a job. But do they have another partner that easily, particular in the country where divorce is not allowed? Lea works for an NGO for women under domestic violence. Lea is involved in many miserable cases. But I don't think those episodes work well to highlight Lea's way of life.

In her two husbands, Ding, the latter one is always mad in the movie. And finally he betrays her by marrying another woman under his mother's arrangement while Lea was not aware. To portray a life of a woman in dual love, why one of the two men is described as such an unappealing man? Many questions arise from this movie. If only there is English sub-titile in the interview section in the DVD too.

Bata, Bata... Pa'no Ka Ginawa? is a wonderfully made masterpiece. Hands down to Lualhati Bautista. The film was also magnificent it was very realistic and we owe to this to the talent of Direk Chito Rono. It is rare that a film enhances a literary text. Usually the films do not give justice to the written text but in this case the film complimented the literary text. The revisions made on the literary text to fit the big screen was appropriate for the film. There were no major changes made that drastically changed the outcome. It was a good choice of literary text to create into a film. It touches on issues that are not usually talked about specially regarding Women's Rights.It also focused more on the woman and who she really is. The film was very real that affected me deeply.

I had relatively high expectations for this film, especially since I had thoroughly enjoyed Lualhati Bautitasta's novel of the same title, and had noted that she was also the script writer.

The many sub-plots in the movie never seemed to work well together, especially during the times that various 'social commentary' were awkwardly introduced. A confrontation scene between the lead character and her daughter's principal had a bizarre twist when the two suddenly started talking about human rights violations simply because the latter discovered that the former was a social worker.

Vilma Santos' acting was decent but did not get me to empathize with her, perhaps due to the bizarre plot that she had to act through. Albert Martinez was disappointing as her one-dimensional violent partner, disappointing because he's acted better so much better in other movies (e.g. Pusong Mamon). Serena Dalrymple's character as the kid who couldn't keep her mouth shut was refreshing though, in that finally, here was a more realistic portrayal of how Filipino children really are, as opposed to other movies where they tend to be typecast as meek and fragile.