SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     The irony of UnMarry (Quantum Films, Cineko Productions, 2025)  is that the story has more to do with the particulars of the annulment process — the way the intricate legalities unfold in bland meeting rooms and harsh courtroom exchanges at odds with the fragile circumstances. Over the course of 131 absorbing minutes, as the movie navigates Celine (Angelica Panganiban) and Stephen (Tom Rodriguez), and Ivan (Zanjoe Marudo) and Maya’s (Solenn Heusaff) clashing perspectives, UnMarry never preaches, it just presents a story. Director Jeffrey Jeturian doesn’t attempt to reconstruct the path toward annulment so much as the complex psychological turmoil it instigates for his protagonists. My favorite swath of the film is before Celine tentatively begins a friendship with charming artist, Ivan, whom she meets at her lawyer Jackie Lambridas' (Eugene Domingo) office. And despite some surprising bits of humor, UnMarry is very much a domestic drama. The chemistry between Panganiban and Marudo is palpable and engrossing. They have both been remarkable before, but this is a new career watermark for both, repaying Jeturian’s trust in them with emotional and complex work. UnMarry works beautifully and trenchantly is in no small part due to Panganiban’s extraordinarily emotionally honest performance. She's a tremendous, fine-tuned actor of wit and sincerity. What attracts me to this performance is its deceptive ease. Panganiban perfectly captures the roiling emotions of a woman having to define herself for the first time. She lets us into private moments without pretense or barriers, revealing the hidden hurts and textures of Celine’s psyche. Her feelings of shrinking into invisibility and feeling like nothing more than a vessel for Stephen is at the root of her unhappiness. She admits to getting caught up in his spark but has come to discover over time that the facade was nothing more than narcissism and control disguised as charisma. Marudo takes chances in this movie. He’s out on an emotional limb. He’s letting us see and experience things that many actors simply couldn’t reveal. Ivan, blinded to the realities of his personal life, feels gaslighted by Maya’s decision to involve Atty. Grace Agravante (Angel Aquino) to overcomplicate already complicated matters. But people are complicated and UnMarry is sensitive to the fact that people evolve over time and not always together. 

     The two leads own the film, but Jeturian’s skill with ensemble has become remarkable over the years and this is his best work. There are minor parts from great performers like Shamaine Buencamino who plays Alma, Celine's mother and Adrienne Vergara as her sister, Joanne along with a memorable supporting turn by Zac Sibug as Ivan’s son, Elio. Then there’s Domingo's scene-stealing performance and she gets to top off the film’s most delicious running joke. UnMarry is a drama of separation and when it’s over you may feel like you know the lives it’s about as well as you know your own. Yet, it isn’t just the tale of a marital breakdown and its aftermath. It’s a film about annulment: how it operates, what it means, its larger consequences. But if you’re wondering when it was that a movie last dealt with the subject of separation on such a big-picture scale, you might have to go back 43 years — to the era of Ishmael Bernal's Broken Marriage. UnMarry makes a worthy addition to that canon, though so much has changed. This is the first film set inside what might be called the annulment industrial complex. It’s about two couples coming to terms with a process that, however necessary, is more wounding at times than their heartbreak. There are two sides to every separation and in UnMarry, Jeturian divides our sympathies in a most ingenious way. More than half of the drama is told from Celine's point of view, so it seems as if the annulment is all happening to her. And since Panganiban is an intensely sympathetic actor, we can feel, as Celine gets buried under circumstances beyond her control, that we’re on her side. But Jeturian peels back the truth of her marriage, layer by layer. And we start to see that Celine, for all her affection and intelligence, doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. The scene in which she relates the story of their marriage in court is a blistering tour de force. It’s also about how the system of annulment, as it now operates, can be one big messed-up shit show. Yet one of the powerful subtleties of UnMarry is that the annulment process, flawed as it is, becomes the vehicle through which Celine and Ivan confront the underlying reality of their marriages. They go to court and tear up their lives, all to solve a problem that Ivan, if he was a different sort of man, could have solved in two minutes. Chris Martinez and Therese Cayaba's brilliant screenplay never falters or hits a wrong note. They come up with smart, witty, saddened and searching characters whose ability to articulate their feelings is never less than lifelike and writes scenes that are like verbal arias. Marriage, though it can feel to those who cherish it, is like the difference between being alive and being nowhere. UnMarry captures that truth with such an exquisite combination of love and heartbreak that it leaves you chastened and enraptured.

Sound: Lamberto Casas Jr., Alex Tomboc

Music: Len Calvo

Editor: Benjo Ferrer

Production Design: Angel B. Diesta, PDGP

Director of Photography: Kara Moreno,LPS

Written By: Chris Martinez, Therese Cayaba

Directed By: Jeffrey Jeturian

     Beautifully written and performed, Mga Uod at Rosas (IAN Film Productions, 1982) goes far beyond stereotyping, never patronizing. The film has a static look with many shots of characters talking or sitting and waiting. Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest filmmakers, used to say he believed the real subject of cinema is the human face. Ding, the starving artist is played by Johnny Delgado whose eyes can bore through other actors. Nina, the woman who inspires him, is played by Lorna Tolentino, startlingly beautiful, with sensuous lips and deep eyes under arched brows, she seems at first a prop for a familiar story: The artist is obsessed with her, but he wants more than that. Socorro (Nora Aunor), fully understands this, she knows him too well. The great central passages involve creation. Ding begins to sketch, we observe over his shoulder. Director Romy V. Suzara rarely cuts away, we see a blank sheet of paper and the drawing taking shape there. We see the physical process, then the first tentative lines on the page. Does it sound boring to watch a man simply drawing for extended periods? Yes, it does, but it is not. Suspense is building. That’s what Ding wants. Socorro begins to understand. She accepts the pain to prove she is the equal of his determination. One day when he despairs, she will see this through. Of the performances, there is nothing to be said about Delgado except that he communicates exactly what Ding needs from his art and doesn’t need many words to do it. Tolentino has an ethereal beauty, but it is her talent that has made her a leading actress of her generation. Suzara invites us to marvel at her beauty, but only in frank and desexualized terms. He wants everything, the blood, the fire, the ice, everything that rests within her body. Without any dialog or behavior to spell it out, Aunor has an astonishing face that can hold a close-up. The tiny inflections in her face open an overwhelming blend of frustration, patience, determination, her own kind of unpretentious clarity and above all deep sadness. 

     Tremendously played by Aunor, Socorro is a woman who generally likes to keep her emotions in check. Suzara makes her face the center of the movie. Many films refer to a lead character’s face – the reaction shot is not a new technique, but here, it’s about as well as it can be done. The real highlight of the film, though, is Aunor. Socorro’s complexity is phenomenally conveyed by Aunor, who is able to portray her character’s internal struggle with a few simple facial gestures. Socorro feels lived in and it’s the kind of performance that evokes a sense of familiarity and empathy with the viewer. Aunor commands the proceedings and Suzara lets you know it with lingering close-ups of her face, underscoring her beauty and boundless ability to make us care deeply no matter what role she undertakes. Aunor is always good, but performances like this suggest that for all her acclaim, she might actually be underrated. The movie works because of the beautiful brush strokes of Danny Dalena although Delgado clearly does a bit of painting and drawing himself. Suzara holds his camera still for long minutes at a time as we watch the blank page being turned into something beautiful. Many long moments go by without a word, it's that mesmerizing. Suzara's presentation is all matter of fact and in its matter of factness, Mga Uod at Rosas feels downright chaste. Suzara isn't a mechanical filmmaker, but there's a casual dexterity to the movie's craftsmanship; its aesthetics strike with a simplicity that belies its complexities as a work of art. Long takes, slow zooms and deep focus give Mga Uod at Rosas a sense of disciplined stillness, all the better to record the meticulous efforts of its two chief subjects as they make art out of life. There's more to Mga Uod at Rosas of course, but we take intermittent breaks to spend a moment here and there with Ding and Socorro. At the same time, the film does take its own twists and turns. If you suspect that his characters' faith will be tested and and hearts broken, you suspect correctly, just not necessarily in the ways you might imagine. Suzara has created his own work of art in directing Mga Uod at Rosas. Art and life are viewed as one and the same problem.

Production Design: Manny Morfe, Danny Dalena

Story & Screenplay: Edgardo M. Reyes

Director of Photography: Romeo Vitug

Film Editor: Ike Jarlego, Jr.

Musical Director: George Canseco

Directed By: Romy V. Suzara

     Joselito Altarejos' Greatest Performance (2076 Kolektib, Pelikula Indiopendent, Studio X, 2026) sets the stage for a movie wholly consumed by Sunshine Cruz's single, hypnotizing presence. Her Yvonne Rivera invites a tantalizing mixture of fascination and pity. Less nonfiction portrait than a poetic framing of domestic frustrations, Greatest Performance is a lot more than flailing show business aspirations. On the surface, Yvonne’s hardships aren’t unique. In Greatest Performance, Altarejos positions his star in the grips of inner turmoil while constantly battling to display self-confidence. As Yvonne revisits the possibility of returning to show business, the validity of her earlier efforts gradually come into play.  Though her complaints occasionally reach a pathetic extreme, the story’s dramatic weight holds: She’s the embodiment of genuine talent squandered by personal hangups and debilitating gender barriers, Yvonne is trapped somewhere in between the two. Altarejos fashions a narrative out of Yvonne's disarray by capturing her in small asides in between the greater developments in her emerging crisis. She reflects on her mistakes and rehearses. Even so, by virtue of Yvonne’s uneasy state of affairs, the movie delivers a canny look at the ills of the entertainment industry. Ms. Cruz expresses emotion no less candidly than she would in any context: Even her rawest confessions are delivered with an actorly awareness of dramatic consequence, there’s little doubting her ferocity as an actress. A performer is different, to be sure someone uniquely conscious of the various roles they must inhabit and trained to do so but in degree, not in kind.

     Actor Soliman Cruz looks to be having a field day behaving badly as filmmaker Mar Alvarez, the personification of the cruelty women experience in the industry, while Oliver Aquino is totally committed to Drew's trajectory. In more precocious hands, Altarejos' densely self-reflexive premise could come across as coldly eggheaded, but his formal conviction and profound empathy for his subject ensure the film never feels ruled by its concept. The helmer also acts as his own editor and writer, and his crisp, refined work in both those departments contributes to the films' simultaneous sense of intimacy and intent examination, but his camera’s investment in Ms. Cruz is unwavering — and she returns it with equally committed dependence. Greatest Performance convincingly reconciles private passion with public desire by suggesting that, for women in particular, the 21st-century limelight is always on, no matter the setting or venue. Altarejos' extraordinary collaboration with Ms. Cruz is a playful, provocative examination of self-performance. As much as Greatest Performance is a rare and singular portrait of a woman struggling to stage a comeback, it succeeds best as a layered commentary on the many facets of performance. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Greatest Performance, in the end, is how much of a true collaboration it is between filmmaker and subject. Ms. Cruz stands as Altarejos' creative equal: an emotionally charged, complicated and melancholic spirit who lives through intersecting roles in order to find her own peace of mind. Exhilarating and unnerving in equal measure, Greatest Performance is the rare film that could be said to capture life in its purest, most lyrical form.

Director/Writer: Joselito Altarejos

Directors of Photography: Manuel Garcellano, Marco Bertillo Mata

Editor: Joselito Altarejos

Sound Desigbn: Alex Tomboc, Bebet Casas

Musical Score: Arbi Barbarona

Production Design: 2076 Kolektib

 

     Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.'s Poon (Banana Entertainment, C-Frame Production, 2025) is an exceptional horror film, but not in the way most would assume. Its general horror content may have been recycled from previous movies and its inner intelligence and coherence may no longer awe discerning horror fans that have followed recent Filipino movie trends. Nevertheless, where Poon truly impresses is in its setting-construction, in the unhurried building of atmosphere, in the attention to detail and characterization, and of course, its top-notch acting. Alix delivers a formally confident story within a detailed family dynamic and thoughtfully conceived visual metaphors to reflect them. The horror erupts from his characters, their relationships and behavior toward one another, as opposed to some random external force exacting its influence on the family. Their broken feelings lay the groundwork for something even more terrifying, all of it pouring from raw emotions, captured by the impressive cast. In the first scene, the family is struck by a tragedy. Peping (Ronaldo Valdez) a man whose domineering presence has tormented his wife, the distraught Berta (Gina Pareno) for some time. Sol (Jaclyn Jose) is suffused with torment of the most lived-in kind. Ria's (Janice de Belen) own relationship with her husband, Daniel, may have troubles, too (weighty ones, given that he’s played by the ever-somber Allen Dizon). Ria's eldest child, Carlo (Will Ashley), the disaffected teenage son, whose younger sister, Faye (Althea Ablan) with the dead stare of a statue, begins to experience visual manifestations. The house becomes an ominous focal point for their despair. As Ria and Mae’s (Ara Mina) tensions with their sister Adele (Lotlot de Leon) grow more extreme (she suffers from shocking nightmares), Faye’s tendency to sleepwalk adds another unpredictable variable to the growing impression of a hidden force overseeing their lives. And then it happens—a disturbing accident sets the horror into motion. Alix plays well in this sandbox, slowly pulling his cords tighter and tighter until the tension threatens to snap everyone in two. But the more we see, the more we become aware of something sinister in the air. Jerry B. Gracio's screenplay masterfully keeps us off balance, preventing us from knowing if we’re seeing something real. Part of what makes Poon so unsettling is its stubborn refusal to reveal what subgenre it's playing in. Is it a psychological horror? A standard haunted house? A possession thriller? Something else? As soon as you think you’ve got a handle on what this movie is and what it’s trying to accomplish, it suddenly switches gears and begins playing in an entirely different milieu. This allows Alix to mix and match tropes to fit his ultimate aim, and while we might not always be shocked by what comes next, we’re often surprised by why it happens.

     A familiar blend of horror tropes is expertly employed by Alix without the usual gimmickry: the eerie appearance of a figure from a distance and the room with a disturbing secret. Strange things start happening to the family, particularly surrounding Sol's daughter. With her husband now gone, Berta delivers an outpouring of her family’s troubling history with tragedy and inexplicable death—a history she has perhaps never verbalized. And just when we think we understand the film’s horror rules, the rules change and it develops into something far more disturbing than we could have imagined. Poon isn't non-stop ghost action. It's more like a psychological thriller established, at first, as a family drama–but one that carefully builds the tension and anxiety to unbearable levels until something completely terrifying happens on the screen. Nevertheless, the film’s purpose, built in gradual pieces throughout, leads to disturbing sights and revelations, the unflinching and uncanny sort. Alix demonstrates with this astoundingly confident film that he’s more capable of orchestrating emotion, the fantastical and the appalling in a prolonged mood of uncertainty—all leading to a chilling grand design. The unbalanced approach to storytelling is perfectly matched by Alix’s cast, who seem to all implicitly trust their leader and are willing to follow him down his terrifying rabbit hole. Ablan impressively manages to be deeply sympathetic and fundamentally unsettling at the same time, De Leon delivers an intense, phenomenally complex performance. It’s Jose’s film though, drawing on such a well of emotions, she’s stressful to look at even in static imagery. And yet, as in most of her performances, there’s a resilience in that tough, pragmatic gaze. Sol is damned if she’s going to be a victim. Poon is an assault on your emotional response. And that’s where the film really shines–its ability to create emotional turbulence and how strange it is to associate those feelings alongside traditional horror-given emotion; fear. Poon is also a film that examines how a father’s past can haunt a family after his death, proving that the sins of our parents have lasting effects on our own psyches. The pain and the demons in Poon aren’t only literal; they’re the same ghosts that torture families struggling with grief. The realism, the death and the pain of Poon are nearly impossible to separate. 

Direction: Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr.

Screenplay: Jerry B. Gracio

Director of Photography: TM Malones

Editors: Xila Ofloda, Mark Llona

Music: Eigen Ignacio

Production Design: Jay Custodio

Sound Design: Immanuel Verona, Fatima Nerikka Salim

 

    Director Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr's Pila (Global Japan Entertainment, Feminine Annex, Noble Wolf, Astral 88, 2026) centers on a relationship between poor, struggling adults, showing how human connection helps them survive in awful economic conditions More broadly, it forges a connection between its audience and a social class from which most of them will be very far removed. It’s a film about the unsustainable condition of being poor and alive, which admittedly sounds like a grueling experience. But Pila seeks understanding—it seeks to connect—and understanding is innately hopeful. From the very first, Regina (Gina Pareño), is in a perfect storm of bureaucratic misery. What follows is her experience being part of that system where a person is just a number and where there is little place for basic human understanding and compassion. All this may sound mundane and even dull, but the film is anything but that. Under Alix’s nuanced direction, we follow Regina as she makes friends and does everything in her power to make her own life bearable. Pareño plays Regina without pathos, yet she extracts tears from us with the brave face her character puts on, masking the frustration of her situation. Pareño's witty habitation of Regina builds to emotional crescendos that shake with great dramatic force. What really holds our attention, however, is the camerawork, a single unbroken take of some 101 minutes, which is quite an achievement. Sure, similar feats have been done before, but here it grabs us early on and pulls us into the story, much as Regina herself is pulled into the unfolding drama. 

     Pila fashions itself as a social drama about the poor, but it also has plenty to say about the indignities of aging and where the two intersect: turns out being elderly and poor are a deadly combination. Regina discovers she has missed the digital revolution. When you’re poor, problems have a way of compounding. It’s as frustrating as it is relatable. And probably necessary. The true power of this gentle, realistic film that displays the kindness of others and human hope, lies in showing ordinary people struggling on a daily basis against the system, that is paradoxically designed to keep them in the same miserable place. The scenes are mounted in such a compelling way that speaks volumes. Indeed, and throughout his solid career, Alix never needed special effects or modern techniques to create a powerful film. He just focuses on simple characters, which we can easily identify ourselves with and exposes their plausible problems with heart and emotion. Despite the film’s deliberate pace and quiet tone, Alix isn’t interested in letting anybody off the hook with a happy ending. Escapist cinema, it is not. But with Pila, he is using the medium for one of its most crucial purposes: to shine a light on injustices he sees around him, as well as on our capacity for human decency. The greatest virtue of Pila is its patience in confronting painstakingly the incremental humiliations visited on the neediest in society. Alix's film is about empathy, a portrait of ordinary people, blunt, bracing yet loving and far, far from mere polemic.

Screenplay: Ralston Jover

Director of Photography: Nelson Macabatbat, Jr., LFS

Production Designer: Adolfo Alix, Jr.

Music: Mikoy Morales

Sound Design: Immanuel Varona

Directed By: Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr.