Insiang

(1976) Insiang (In Filipino with English subtitles) DRAMA/ SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Hilda Koronel plays the title character Insiang as we see how she is being exploited while living in the impoverished part of the Philippines. Who lives with her self-centered single mother, Tonya who slaves after her without giving her a proper paycheck. The mom, Tonya (Mona Lisa) then kicks her father's side of the family so that she can allow her lover, Dado (Ruel Vernal) closer to her (who is young enough to be her son). Except that Dado obviously has ulterior motives which is to make out with her daughter Insiang. And besides that, her love life is kind of complicated in which she hopes her current boyfriend, Bebot (Rez Cortez) cares enough to want to elope with her, but as it turns out the only thing he wanted to do was to get into her pants.

I kind of liked it more after my second viewing, as I tried to look for a plot, except that living in the slums itself is also part of the plot. I did not care for how Insiang forgave her mother after not believing her when she told her about Dado's advances. I don't quite understand how a mother who does not believe her own child that she forgave her for not believing her.

Insiang is a must watch for any movie enthusiast. Hilda Koronel plays a young lass in the slums of Metro Manila and when her mother decided to live with Dado, she was devastated.

What follows is masterful movie making, revenge at its finest. Go watch this !

A young girl named Insiang lives in the Philippines in dire poverty with her mother who treats her like dirt. Then her mother invites her lover Dado to live with them...but Dado only has eyes for Insiang.

Interesting and well-acted but VERY depressing. With the sole exception of the title character there's not one likable character in the entire film and the conditions that the characters live in is shocking. It is historically important as the first Filipino film to play at the Cannes Film Festival back in 1978 but it's so bleak.

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.

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.