Insiang

Lino Brocka's 1976 melodrama of slum family love double-crosses was the first Filipino film to be shown at Cannes and is being revived at festivals. It deserves to be seen for the female actors, mother Tonia (Mona Lisa, credible as an aging lady who's still highly sexed and attractive) and gorgeous daughter Insiang (pronounced "Inshang"). Hilda Koronel, who plays Insiang, is enough like a Loren or a Lollobrigida to make you think of Fifties or Sixties Italian cinema and the visual style is conventionally of an early period, but this brutal story lacks the humanity and warmth of the Italians. Tonia drives a family of in-laws out of her shack (which is in with other families; in this barrio there is no privacy and all is known) because she can't feed them, but her ulterior motive is to bring in Dado, a handsome, macho man and a gambling no-good probably young enough to be her son, as her lover. Insiang has several young men interested in her, but the one she chooses is too cowardly and lazy to run away with her as she would like. Soon Dado puts the make on Insiang. It turns out badly for just about everyone in this miserablist drama, which has been compared to Fassbinder and Sirk. It's been commented that the story undercuts the two major values in Filipino film – motherhood and the sanctity of the family. Brocka certainly keeps things lively, as do popular dramatic films from other Third World countries, and telenovelas. Yes, this holds the attention; but unfortunately the print used for the NYFF 2006 showing was an ugly-looking digital transfer that made all the boys look pimply and the shots look shoddy. Only Koronel's face shines through.

Within the slums of Manila's Tondo shantytown, tales of urban melodrama unfold as sexual abuse runs rampant in Lino Brocka's gritty revenge fantasy 'Insiang', a film hailed as one of the late Filipino filmmaker's finest. With a powerful blend of unflinching realism and thorny political commentary, Brocka masterfully portrays the struggles of the urban underclass striving for social mobility. For Insiang, an unskilled young woman without prospects, fending off the advances of intoxicated and lecherous men is only half the battle; she longs for escape from the squalor, and with that, the wrath of her scornful mother.

Hilda Koronel's portrayal of Insiang, a domestic maid confined to the slums, is nothing short of captivating. In spite of her dreary surroundings, Insiang radiates with a glow usually reserved for soap opera starlets. Brocka and cinematographer Conrad Balthazar filmed her in the most flattering angles. Tonya (Mona Lisa), the matriarch, toils long hours at the fish market for little pay. Bitter after her husband abandoned her, Tonya's corrosive disposition erodes the spirits of those around her, including her unemployed in-laws, who she spitefully evicts because they can't help with the household expenses. Soon after, her younger lover, Dado (Ruel Vernal), moves in to tend to her carnal desires day and night, but Dado's consuming lust for Insiang leads to his downfall.

Brocka's disdain for President Ferdinand Marcos and his authoritarian rule of martial law is evident in the film's harrowing opening scene set in a slaughterhouse, in which the slaughter of a pig and its subsequent grinding in a meat grinder metaphorically represent the ruthless nature of the dictatorship. Not surprisingly, authorities in the Philippines were up in arms and tried to have the film banned. Brocka and Balthazar shot the movie on location in an actual slum, and they captured the streets teeming with residents coexisting in cramped conditions.

A timid young man who covets Insiang from afar hopes to exit the slums armed with education, offering a glimmer from the oppressive gloom, but it's the school of hard knocks that dishes out life's harshest lessons. 'Insiang' is foremost a charged melodrama about a damaged mother and daughter locked in a cycle of poverty with no escape. The flammable mix of lust, jealousy and tragedy can only end in tears.

A strong, well written story, perfect casting and performances, clever staging and pacing make for a powerful love story, set in the slums of Manila. Insiang (Hilda Koronel) is tormented by an embittered mother (Mona Lisa), barely able to contain her anger at the husband who abandoned her for another woman and left behind their daughter to abuse and belittle. Tensions explode when Mom takes in a much younger lover (Ruel Vernal), who bides his time, ogling Insiang. Her boyfriends (Rez Cortez and Marlon Ramirez) are too young, too weak and too poor to do much for her, but the person who loves her most is eventually revealed.

Squalor, grime, and poverty are all palpable in this gritty film from Lino Brocka, which centers around a young woman (Hilda Koronel) who is mentally abused by her mother (Mona Lisa), and physically abused by her mother's lover (Ruel Vernal). It feels as though we're immersed in a slum the entire movie, and none of its scenes ever feel like they're on a set (they may not have been). We feel the utter lack of privacy in the home in this little shanty town, with its squat toilet in the living space, and the daughter forced to see and hear her mother with her lover. In the town we see men behaving badly by getting drunk, groping women, and frittering their time away in the pool hall or gambling. There is a sense of these characters having few options, with high unemployment in the town, and for those who do have menial jobs, having to get by on meager wages. This was contrary to the image the Marcos regime was trying to push of the Philippines, and it's not surprising the film was banned.

Aside from the realistic window the film gives into the poverty of the masses while Imelda Marcos was out buying all those shoes, it's also the queen mother of stories where the rape victim isn't believed - in this case by her own mother. In another sad moment her boyfriend (Rez Cortez) takes advantage of her in a cheap hotel room, all while the audience is thinking, good lord, she needs love and kindness, not sex. Where the film goes from there I won't spoil, except to say it's as satisfying as it is depressing.

Oh, last note. I don't really care if the extended slaughterhouse scene before the credits rolled was meant to set the tone for the cruel world we're about to see, or if it was a metaphor for the Philippines under Marcos - it was brutal and unnecessary to see. As a vegetarian a small part of me likes people confronted with the facts of these cruel places, but to see it in this context and for so long was a very unpleasant surprise, and really turned my stomach. You can certainly skip over all of this if you need to.

The movie starts with a barbaric scene at a slaughterhouse. Workers gut live hogs that are hung upside down from their hoofs, squealing. My gawd the squealing. Blood everywhere. Hogs getting skinned, boiled, run through grinders. I practically became a vegetarian right then and there.

Then the opening credits roll. And what unfolds for 90 minutes, give or take, is a movie where humans who are metaphorically hanging by their hooves in grinding poverty yell, fight, spill blood and act unimaginably cruel to one another.

Insiang is the beautiful daughter of a miserable middle-aged woman whose husband ran off. Town stud Dado moves in with the old lady but he's got eyes for Insiang just like every other boy in town. The boys are all lazy, gambling alcoholics with zero prospects. Dado is hardly any better.

Eventually Dado r3pes Insiang, who runs to one of the boyfriends to be consoled. He takes advantage of her vulnerability by taking her to a seedy motel and penetrating her.

Insiang has hit rock bottom. What follows is a tale of revenge that Shakespeare's audiences would have loved.

I got a little restless in the second act waiting for them to move the plot along. I was getting a little worn out by the harpy mom. But the third act is so much depressing fun that you forget about the flabby middle.

The uncompromising final scene fits perfectly. This is definitely not Manilawood.