Pinilakang Tabing

The title ages us a bit. Pinilakang Tabing means “silver screen” when movie screens were painted silver. That was when I turned 20 and left Pea Eye. I vaguely remember Nida Blanca and Nestor de Villa in their romantic-comic musicals, and “Ilokana” Manang Biday, Gloria Romero who could not speak the tongue, played the role with Ric Rodrigo. The operative reality on the “remembering” is “vaguely.”

Tomorrow, TFC ABS-CBN brings to Saipan’s Pinas (my generic word for Pinoy and Pinay) the venerable Ate Vi (Vilma Santos, the Star for All Seasons, who can sing, dance, and cry on cue) in a movie, Everything About Her, which appears to be a Meryl Streep playing a CEO in NYC without the melodramatic illness. With Philippine movies’ penchant to ape its progeny of Hollywood glitter and happy endings, plus Bollywood practice of pouring out tears in between, coercively rubbing it in to the audience, that is hardly surprising.

Given the long list of movies and TV programs our actress made, while media compared her against the rough but pleasantly diminutive morena Nora Aunor of Bicol, I’ll enjoy the memory and the remembering, though I confess, I never had the chance to see any of their movies. Vi is less than a decade younger than I so she was just a teener when I forsook Pinilakang Tabing.

Anyway, the erstwhile mayor of Lipa City, and current governor of Batangas, wife to Senator Ralph Recto, a previous though brief spouse to Edu Manzano when she birthed a child, shows her longevity is strictly out of innocent but abundant personal charm.

Ms. Santos’ performances and her tenacious presence in the silver screen is legendary, her awards more than a roomful. But our interest is on Philippine film making itself.

My brother when he was still in Pea Eye, hung out with an Uncle that considered Miss Universe Gloria Diaz extended family; got close to the movie star. I did elbow earlier with Kennedyesque Senator Manong Ferdie and the glamorous Waray Meldie before we parted ways after 1081.

Saipan’s movie theatre that closed when it was temporarily Soudelor-drenched hosts the mega flick and since most of my readers are migrants or CWs from the Philippines, it is only fair that such a momentous intrusion gets promoted in a small island like Saipan.

The movie itself looks like a typical TFC offering, with plenty of gab, some accented to the highest decibel, lots of crying in the midst of the dialogue, the dialectic reaching symphonic crescendo so the ending would play out quietly into the sunset.

In the movie, I gather from perusing the Internet, Vivian is a successful female executive portrayed by Vilma who suffers from stage 3 cancer, and a recalcitrant son Albert who felt neglected and needed to be herded back to the fold played by Xian Lim (put an accent between the vowels on the first name and he’d be a Huangdi in Shaanxi), with a confident nurse Jaica, played by Angel Locsin, hired to care for Mama in her waning years, and ending as a bridge between mother and son. The plot of Shakespearean proportion complements the star-studded cast. That’s probably why I am anxious to revisit the wide screen and see how portrayals moved from before to now.

As to ABS-CBN moving into the Saipan market, promoter James Chua got ST’s attention. I do not watch TV at all but my neighbors blare THC programs in the cathedral-like echoes of our apartment complex.

In my youth, the elite families included Quirino in Ilocos Sur that numbered the late President Elpidio. Brother Antonio pioneered TV, the latter confident enough to oppose the politically powerful landed family of Yulo, who, along with Lopez in Iloilo were established power bases of post WWII Pilipinas. Quirino started ABS and Lopez CBN, merged to form the current broadcast corporation that produced Ate Vi’s offering.

Ate Vi and ABS-CBN drags along with them the elite families of King Philipp II’s former domain, and whatever passes for “Pilipino” that means Europe’s colonial parceling of the world, it has their fingerprints on the till. The family names are familiar. Quirino of Vigan, definitely of Chinese origin. The Huangdom (Kingdom) of Pangasinan (Huang Hai also translates as the East Sea) traded with Japan and China before Spain. The Spaniards called Li-Han (Lingayen) as the Port of Japan because folks wore Chinese and Japanese attire. That’s before Juan Salcedo subdued Lim Hong (aka, Limahong), the wukuo (pirate) terror of Fujian and Guangdong, in the Battle of Manila, and who tried unsuccessfully to establish a Huangdom in Li-Han.

Well, we’ve gone a long way off the immediacy of Ate Vi and her movie Everything About Her but the TFC promo occasions those who go by Señor Felipe de España’s name to test the rich and diverse history of where they came from, if only to view themselves as heir to the Sultanate of Brunei, the European colonial era, and the world turmoil of the 20th Century to the present U.S. ascent and decline.

OK. Let’s go see the movie.