Visually and emotionally, Ligaw na Bulaklak (Crown Seven Film Productions, 1976) survives with its power surprisingly intact. The film's master stroke is its understanding that this is Juan's story, told from his own passionate, sad, tortured perspective. As Mang Juan, Vic Silayan creates one of the great, fearless screen performances. His face registers the astonishing complexity of Juan's inner life. He is calculating, eventually soul-sick with his own love. Most important, Silayan never metaphorically winks at the audience to hint that he knows better than Juan. He seems to know exactly what Juan knows, with all the discomforting truths. It is an immensely seductive performance, but one whose seductions are never on the surface. Ishmael Bernal was expected to have made the film more titillating, instead, he has risen to the level of his material. His direction is sensitive to the screenplay's wit as well as it's lyricism. Alma Moreno is extraordinary as Evelyn. She is within sight of womanhood yet remains, definitely, a schoolgirl.
Interiorized in both performances is foreknowledge of the characters' fate, a spying of the downward spiral. There is bitter logic in the way they interact, both with each other and with the camera. She seems constantly in motion, while he, at the center of the screen is whipped by the camera. Bernal depicts Evelyn in a frighteningly erotic way, countered by the knowing look in her eyes, she’s not as unaware of her seductiveness as we at first suspect or is she? Evelyn may be disturbingly sexy, but that is the point of Bernal’s film. Ligaw na Bulaklak coils and uncoils like a snake in the sun, sinuous, alluring. Bernal has found a core of unmelodramatic doom and by observing a certain discipline, he carries it through to a last scene in which the film's elements are fused. In the end, the film is a tragic morality tale and a poignant character study. It is unexpectedly perfect, this ending with Evelyn's blood stained cheek like an ambiguous cancer, the meadow-mongering of Bernal's seriousness is joined to his insistence on the characters' misery and at that moment, one feels loss.
Cinematography: Arnold Alvaro
Film Editor: Edgardo Vinarao
Sound Effects: Jun Martinez, Danilo Salvador
Music: Ernani Cuenco
Screenplay: Edgardo M. Reyes
Direction: Ishmael Bernal
