Elwood Perez finds the right tone in Diborsyada (Regal Films, Inc., 1979). And it’s not always very easy to find because he wants to make his film both true and funny, not sacrificing laughs for the truth. Diborsyada resembles Divorce Pilipino Style (1976) not only in its insight and precise observation of behavior, but also with the emotional satisfaction it provides — Perez isn’t afraid to pull out all the romantic stops at the right moment. He wants to record the exact textures and ways of speech, the emotional complexities of his characters and point out the empty and hiding places in their lives. But Perez is not a slice-of-life artist. He starts from real and sooner or later arrives at a release and the movie depends on how well he controls the release. In Dibrosyada, he has prepared his ground so carefully that we not only care but even believe when (Gina) Gina Alajar falls in love with sexy businessman, Jim (Jimi Melendez). He was the perfect casting here and the Alajar character has been so wonderfully realized that we’d even buy it if she met and fell in love with Melendez as himself. There are scenes in Diborsyada so well written and acted that our laughter is unsettling, the laughter of exact recognition. The first scene of Gina with girlfriends Wendy (Deborah Sun) and Shirley (Bibeth Orteza) is presented with precise accuracy, all the words and attitudes ring true. The interplay between Gina, her mother, Seferina (Perla Bautista) and mother-in-law Jane (Marissa Delgado) is also wonderfully well understood. Great thought, care and love must have gone into the writing of Diborsyada, but great courage went into the acting too. Alajar takes chances here and never seems concerned about protecting herself and reveals as much in a character as anyone has. The luminosity in her performance was all the more joyful. It’s a lesson for critics on the dangers of assessing performance in a movie, a medium in which the actors may be more at the mercy of the other craftsmen than we can easily see. Perez decided to go with his intuition and he was spectacularly right. We have to understand how completely Gina was a married woman, it's a journey that Perez makes into one of the funniest, truest, sometimes most heartbreaking movies I've ever seen.
The going is sometimes pretty rough, especially when Gina's trying to make sense out of things after Mike (Michael de Mesa) leaves her. What does the movie really say, about women in our society? It's not a message picture — it’s supposed to make us feel what the woman in this situation (and therefore many women in the same situation) might go through when a marriage ends. Diborsyada is wise to spend enough time at the top establishing the marriage as an apparently happy one, the sex between Gina and Mike, as her husband is as easy and familiar as it is occasionally erotic. The scenes with Melendez are perhaps the trickiest in the film. There’s the temptation to accuse Perez of an improbably happy ending. Having given herself to one man, unwisely as it turned out, Gina will now keep permanent possession of herself. She has to take two chances: the chance of falling in love and the chance that Jim won’t settle for less than all of her. He is a man who is perfectly right and perfectly wrong for her. Gina takes chances, keeping her independence while shouldering the burden of his dependence on her (and the shots are the visualization of her choice). Alajar's out on an emotional limb, letting us see and experience things that many actresses simply couldn't reveal. Perez takes chances, too. He wants Diborsyada to be true. We have to believe at every moment that life itself is being considered here, but the movie has to be funny, too. He won't settle for less than the truth and the humor and wonder of Diborsyada is that he gets it. Perez's achievement is distinctively choreographic, For all the trenchant conversation, he sets the characters into mad motion, alone and together — jogging, dancing, fighting, strolling and embracing. When the unmoored Gina finds a new lover — her struggle for independence, after a life of comfortable subordination, resumes and it’s as much a matter of her physical space as her emotional one. And Perez does it in a movie so firmly in control of its language, body movement, personal interplays and its most fleeting facial expressions that we’re touched by real human sensibilities. In Diborsyada, Elwood Perez and Gina Alajar discover beautiful and worthy things about women.
Sound Supervision: Rolly Ruta, Vic Macamay
Production Design: Ulay Tantoco
Director of Cinematography: Johnny Araojo
Screenplay: Toto Belano
Music: Lutgardo Labad
Film Editor: Rogelio Salvador
Direction: Elwood Perez
