SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

Nakawin Natin Ang Bawat Sandali

Director Elwood Perez has done what was dismissed before as an impossibility, making a good love-triangle drama. Nakawin Natin Ang Bawat Sandali (Sampaguita Pictures) is not just a good movie, it is a superior movie. It has a uniformly good performance by the cast which includes Baby Delgado, Roel Vergel de Dios, Anita Linda, Jose Villafranca and the two leads Christopher de Leon and especially Vilma Santos who has done a surprisingly intelligent and affecting character portrayal. Not since Eddie Romero's Sinong Kapiling, Sinong Kasiping? (1977) have we seen characters who think, behave and react to problems and situations like mature, sensitive and intelligent people. The characters do give way to occasional hysterical outbursts, but they somehow wake up to their senses before they completely forget themselves. And they are people in believable situations with real problems and genuine emotions. When they talk, they are seldom silly and when they are silly, they are aware of it. But even when they are silly or trite, they are never unsympathetic. Their conversations in fact, are the most sophisticated heard in a Filipino movie in a long time, shrewd, wry, loving, crisp and smart. The story is simple enough, but the details can be so complicated. Angela (Santos) turns her back on her fiancée Dennis (de Dios) and has an affair with old flame Benjamin (de Leon) who is married to Cristina (Delgado). This is a common plot reworked to death in other movies. In another director's hands, the story would walk the tightrope between stale romantic melodrama and sensationalized new morality expose, but Perez invests it with such subtlety, sympathy, affection and full understanding, though inevitably with some slight cynicism too that he actually elevates the story into a search by intelligent people for meaning in human and personal relationships.

As Angela and Benjamin are fully aware, every successful relationship is based on mutual respect and understanding and an honest and frank give-and-take policy, with both partners trusting each other. This is what is missing in the relationship between Benjamin and Cristina. The woman, cool and educated as she is, doggedly pursues her husband. It seems like she regards frequent marital or romantic spats as merely a normal, quotidian thing, a feeling  she does not share with her husband. In contrast, Angela and Benjamin are not similarly predisposed, since both are willing to understand and adjust to each other's personal problems. The movie's happiest moments are when Angela is with Benjamin and the saddest when the other characters are bumping into each other without reaching out. Nakawin Natin Ang Bawat Sandali is definitely and definitively Perez's most analytical movie about relationships, a subject he has earlier explored in Masarap, Masakit Ang Umibig (1977). Pausing from the picture's dramatic action, Perez offers an insight into the why's and wherefores of the modern malaise of alienation. The acting is superb. Christopher de Leon is very much alive to the nuances of his character, moving from strength to weakness like a confused Hamlet. Vilma Santos comes as a surprise as a young woman who fights for her right to love. Her good moments are many, like the scene where we can read the disappointment in her face as she vainly tries to talk to Dennis or the scene where her face shows an incredulous expression as she writes a letter to Benjamin. Once again Perez has proven what many other filmmakers, performers and moviegoers seldom realize, that there are really no bad actors and bad actresses, only bad directors.

Directed By: Elwood Perez
Screenplay: Orlando Nadres
Director Of Cinematography: Gener Buenaseda
Music: Lutgardo Labad
Film Editor: Oscar Dugtong
Production Design: Ray Maliuanag
Produced By: Sampaguita Pictures
Release Date: May 26, 1978