‘Everything About Her’ is ‘Everything About Us’

Part of the crowd that attended the Everything About Her first day of screening. Pinoys went to watch it in droves; the movie will show Feb. 12-18. (Jaime R.Vergara)

It used to be that I went to the movies and be entertained, which in Pinas’ simply meant a momentary escape from dusty and humid tropical existence, air-conditioned Never Netherland, or to fantastic futuristic fancies of the imagination.

The trailers at the Regal Theatre (the old Hollywood) before the showing of the movie of Ate Vi followed the formula to the T. First two trailers were hard core Sci-Fi, then Captain America, followed by cartoons of Angry Birds, cute, cuddly, and out of this world, Batman vs. Superman, and the jungle’s vitality with the animals in a revved up Jungle Book, none of which exhibited any resemblance to every day living.

I thought I was going to be at a Vilma faithful gathering (lots of over 50s ladies) when I entered the theatre with only me as the Pinoy and a sea of Pinays, some students at a Philippine Consulate English class I taught ages ago, then two men were dragged in by their wives, and an elderly walked in with a bevy of young girls; two young boys came with their Moms. Clearly though, the females outnumbered the males 15-1 at the movie house.

Now, let me say a word about my relationship to reviewing art forms. While living in Chicago where the city museum has Picasso’s Guernica, a painting he drew after the Luftwaffe practiced bombing the Spanish town in Franco’s Civil War, I “dialogued” with art pieces, and other art forms. There are four levels of human consciousness: the objective, reflective, interpretive, and decisional (ORID). The issue was not “authority,” on someone’s say so but “authenticity” where an artform encounter addressed a reality that the viewer is familiar with. Participant observers did not exist.

Against an art form, one allowed awareness of an assault on the five senses, the inner feelings, the social cognitions, and the deeds of the will. Anyone preparing an “art form” conversation in the Institute of Cultural Affairs in Chicago remembered ORID for the four levels to journey a group or an individual from sense experience through feelings and thoughts to the action. It was not on the say so of a Monet or Renoir, a Picasso, or a Warhol; it was on the viewer’s discretion.

The awareness of the viewer is just as important as the art form viewed. There are no bystanders, or just onlookers. One had to “participate”, get into the art form, and the dialogical experience is what determines the value of the art form and its impact. The existentialists demonstrated this mode of thinking in science and philosophy in which we were schooled, but metaphysics is not at issue, authenticity is.

I demystified filmmaking in Beverly Hills in the summer of ’66. De-mythologized was the term applied to iconic figures, spending half of the summer on Rodeo Drive before the place became a glitzy string of high priced boutiques, at the Polynesian restaurant the Luau that opened in ’53. I was a busboy who graduated into being a waiter since I came in early (after two hours on two bus rides from the Watts to Beverly) to do the books from receipts of the previous day. No cooking of books, I became friendly with the Chinese chefs and the Filipino staff, busboysmand waiters who then taught me how to be a waiter on the restaurant floor.

Waiting on tables, I sang “Happy Birthday” to Andy Williams, served lunch to Marlon Brando and Tahitian wife Tarita Teriipaia, and served a meal to a bunch of ladies of a book club who feted toupee-less Rex Harrison a din-din. Memorable was Luau giving me complimentary open charge in the bar and the dining hall on my last day, but I only managed to buy this lady a drink, who gave me a very wet kiss on the lips in gratitude because she evidently already had a few. I would later smile when I read that Jill St. John became Kissinger’s girlfriend. One up on Henry, I just turned 21 so I took the kiss as my happy birthday, and later, Henry (the task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been) as a dialogical friend!

Thus, in both Chicago and L. A., a review of an art form had to include the viewer into the picture, or else the result is objectively stale and dismissible. Put another way, by my teaching experience, students learning vocabulary in class were those who memorized words and dictionary meaning only, and those who tried to understand the words by using them. In a test, the group scores were not significantly different, but a week later, both administered another test on the same words, those who “understood” the words fared better than those who just memorized them.

The experience of seeing Ate Vi and her movie Everything About Her, is not simply just describing what the movie is about (one can Google that and get the info) and whether one should bother to go see it. In an article I wrote last week of the Pinilakang Tabing of Pinas, I recommended that we go see Ate Vi’s movie (she is eight years my junior but in the Filipino honorific tradition, she’s Ate Vi), if only to find out what TFC of ABS-CBN is promoting to Filipinos on Saipan, around the Pacific and the Pacific Rim.

The story line is simple. Vivian is a successful female land developer who discovers she suffers from stage 3 cancer but was too proud to let anyone know about it to protect the vaunted social face (mukha in ‘Pinas, a universal reality in the Orient, mienzi in China, mentsu in Japan, and chemyeon in Korea). A recalcitrant son Albert, played by Xian Lim, who felt neglected when growing up is herded back to the fold by a confident nurse Jaica played by Angel Locsin (she could stay off sweets), hired to care for Mama in her waning years, and ending as a bridge between mother and son. A star-studded cast supports the three main characters.

I once watched a colleague edit a film on Human Development Projects (HDP) around the world, focusing on the first eight sites for showing at the UN Habitat Conference in Vancouver ’76, and the meticulous way he checked and insured that the flow would not be jumpy or visually awkward; it was a marvel on keeping an eye on details. This was not just on the visual either; it also included the audio that accompanied the scenes.

The movie Everything About Her was evidently edited carefully. The cinematography appeared seamless. The editing in some sections might have been difficult for those used to expecting historical chronology but I did find the space-time mix a gift rather than an error in unwieldy segments. The English subtitles were helpful to non-Filipino viewers though some of the nuances were lost in the translation.

The accompanying movie theme song, Something I Need, unobtrusively played in the background, sang by Piolo Pascual and Morissette Amon (reminded me of Canadian Alanis Morissette). The lyrics to the song tells the movie story: If we only die once (hey) I wanna die with you, with the potential of turning the acting into something syrupy at the denouement but I did not see the actors go OA (over act) that way.

I brought a hankie but left it in the car. So did the wallet so I skipped the popcorn. To see a Filipino movie, one must have ample supply of facial tissues. Either that, or I just had not seen a Pinoy movie for a long time. I was susceptible to tears triggered by deployment of authentic, unpretentious, readily identifiable scenes. Nasal drips would have been fine, but on the second half of the movie, the tears poured out inevitably. One of the ladies commented after: nakaka-tuwang nakaka-iyak (“delightfully tearful”—what did I say about translations).

The lines and gestures were classically Pinas. Yes, the conflicts were scripted but then, you expect that from any movie. The nurse enlivened tense situations with light banter, Filipino affectation to the discerning outsider. A Polack (derogatory in NA but not in my use) neighbor who speaks Ilokano in Finansisu (served time in Ilokandia) confirms this in his comments on a piece I wrote on despair that in a stressful situation, Filipinos play it with guffaws, or, at least, give it a light touch of levity (like the jokes on Ferdie and Meldie widespread after the airport assassination of Ninoy).

I sort of expected the three main characters to OA and in the movie’s case where the dialectic of the over-achieving executive over-bearing on employees played sharply from “hateful” to “loving,” one expected jarring transformations. But the actors refrained from being melodramatic; they acted like ordinary human beings under ordinary living conditions (though the opulence surrounding the Vivian character was more of a parody than reality, recognizable only by those who have friends at Forbes Park and Dasmariñas in my time, or the Tagaytay condos today) that endeared the movie to me, and the audience.

I had not seen Vilma Santos since 19-forgotten, and she evidently had more than her share of sessions on the dental chair, but the encounter with the film is something every Pinoys should go to, but more importantly, be prepared to dialogue with it. I got into the movie, or rather, the movie got under my skin, so that the Ate Vi character was no longer “everything about her,” rather, it became “everything about us.”

The Buddhist would say, if you meet the Buddha (yourself) walking, kill it. I did. But it was still worth the while to watch Ate Vi in her movie.

Evidently, it will be another while before I see another Filipino movie again, and given the unorthodox manner this review is written, it will be a while before I am expected to make one again also.