SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

Magkaribal

Elwood Perez's Magkaribal (Regal Films) tackles a complex range of human relations but problematizes it quite rigorously. Ensuing from the competing affections of best friends Lily (Vilma Santos) and Cristy (Alma Moreno) over Erick Guererro (Christopher de Leon), a man who exploits their varying degrees of vulnerability and aspiration to upward mobility, the film seeks to understand what it is that women want and why they want it under circumstances both within and beyond the control of their limited reckoning. How the women in this film choose to make their lives difficult and at times miserable by staking their right to love a man in spite of the circumscriptions of traditional heterosexist norms, engenders a creative tension that enables women to appropriate the power to break the culture of silence and expresses sexuality in specific terms within specific situations. One woman has to inevitably give up the fight, but only after she has achieved a realization that strikes at the core of practical realities. It assumes strong feminist position and transforms female annoyance and obnoxiousness into virtues and codes for contemporary survival. Magkaribal tears asunder from within the patriarchal principle that informs the gender discourse of popular filmography. As the two women who previously clawed at each other over a man decide to leave the bone of contention behind, one senses feminine triumph.

Christopher de Leon embodies the physicality and psyche of a sexy beast whose complexity is at par with that of a De Niro or Pacino. De Leon, here in his prime epitomizes the dramatic range and animal magnetism akin to Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski. Alma Moreno's portrayal of a woman who desires a new life in the face of a very uncertain future is competent. The acting method employed here is able to twist the logic of cliché and reconstitutes the drama of yearning with passion and grace. Vilma Santos shows that the strength of women need not come from the repudiation of "feminine" traits and roles. Neither should they come from brute, shrewish adamance as exemplified by the stereotype, nor from machismo as embodied by her husband. Santos demonstrates that the concept of the beautiful, dainty, feminine and strong are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Rather, these form a character that is finally textured, complex and potentially oppositionist. Magkaribal is commendable for staging clever and well-thought out situations partaking of actual tension and punctuated by defamiliarizing comical scenarios and melodramatic circumventions. A certain style of filmmaking based on genre or other considerations is taken as any distinct mode of creating form in film and is made possible only against a background of options that makes a particular choice significant, meaningful and therefore recognizable stylistically. Film artists work within these possibilities in the process of making art, but are never limited to custom and habit. As an erudite art historian puts it, “The style forbids certain moves and recommends others as effective, but the degree of latitude left to the individual within this system varies at least as much as it does in games.” We can glean in Magkaribal  traces of both rule and risk in the realm of style. Perez, with a degree of compassion for the material approximates this level of filmic grace and craftsmanship with effective and efficient execution which perfectly coheres with directorial design and genre expectations.

Directed By: Elwood Perez
Screenplay: Toto Belano
Cinematography: Johnny Araojo
Musical Director: Ernani Cuenco
Film Editor: Rogelio Salvador
Production Design: Dez Bautista
Produced By: Regal Films
Release Date: August 17, 1979