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THE
ASIAN VALUES DVD REVIEW
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Carlitos Siguion-Reyna’s
Misis Mo, Misis Ko (Your Wife, My Wife), made back in 1989,
now unfolds onscreen at Pelikula At Lipunan ’99 like an unusual
prelude to a very unusual career. Misis was made for Viva
Films, and feels very much like a Viva production, but here and
there throughout are hints and intimations that this is no ordinary
director at work - an innovative bit of editing here; a strikingly
framed shot there; an entire sequence wittily staged. The script,
by Siguion-Reyna’s wife Bibeth Orteza, has a good farcical
premise: a wife betrayed by her husband takes revenge by sleeping
with the husband’s employee, who has a huge crush on her; the
husband replies in kind by sleeping with the wife of said employee.
Misis plays
out too slowly to make good farce, and the attempt to give the characters
"heart" undercuts what should have been a nasty two hours
of black comic fun. But the lethargy and the fuzzy characterization
is about par for most Viva films; what makes this one so notable
is that it was one of the rare times Siguion-Reyna was able to put
ordinary human drama onscreen. You don’t have the hysterical
climaxes that ended Ang Lalaki Sa Buhay Ni Selya (The Man
In Her Life) or Inagaw Mo Ang Lahat Sa Akin (Harvest Home);
you don’t have the hilariously unreal depiction of, say, whorehouses
in Ligaya Ang Itawag Mo Sa Akin (Call Me Joy). And, save
for a scene where Jackie Lou Blanco slides down a cliff-side, you
don’t have any hideously funny bits of business, like the bouncing-rubber-baby
scene in Abot Kamay Ang Pangarap (Elena’s Redemption).
This is subdued
Siguion-Reyna, almost human-sized, and the result is strangely ambivalent.
Measured by conventional yardsticks, Misis Mo, Misis Ko could
be considered Siguion-Reyna’s best work to date, but somehow
it isn’t the best that you want from this filmmaker, it’s
courage - the courage to swing from the rafters, to do loony, out-of-this-world
melodrama with a style and verve no other filmmaker on Earth can
touch.
No, really
- the only one who can even approximate the tone and look of a Siguion-Reyna
film is Pedro Almodovar, and Almodovar is hopelessly corrupt. He’s
got impeccable taste, and whenever he feels a scene is even remotely
ridiculous, he encloses it in quotation marks and make us laugh
at his sophisticated wit. Siguion-Reyna is a purer comic artist;
he has the innocence of Edward Wood, Jr., director of Plan 9 From
Outer Space - considered by many to be the worst film ever made.
Of course Wood,
if he had been asked, would have violently disagreed; that’s
what makes his film so hopelessly funny. Siguion-Reyna clearly operates
in the same oblivious spirit; he firmly believes he’s making
great art, when what he’s really making is great camp.
Note: Businessworld,
February 19, 1999.
The article also appears in Noel Vera's Critic After Dark: A Review
Of Philippine Cinema (BigO Books).
Click here to order.
+ + + + +
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