Maning Borlaza's Stolen Moments (Regal Films Inc., 1987) is melodramatic in the traditional sense, not in the modern pejorative sense, in that it concerns issues of class division and sexual yearning. Alex Bernabe (Miguel Rodriguez) wants a good job, lots of money and a pretty wife on his arm. And he could have it if not for his embarrassing lower-class impulses. His identity is the very thing that prevents him from attaining what he desires. The story crescendos as Alex comes closer to realizing his ambitions. And just as an opportunity presents itself, his past mistakes threaten to derail his progress, resulting in a dramatic downturn. Stolen Moments is a tribute to deft dramatization that the young principals are projected as fully as the maelstrom of life in which they are trapped and with which they are unable to cope. Borlaza composes shots that magnify Alex’s status in an unsympathetic world he nevertheless desperately wants to get inside. This lets us understand Alex’s attraction to plain Marietta (Rio Locsin), but also his desire for the pampered Carol (Alma Moreno) and why it consumes him to the point of destruction. Despite a prohibition against male suitors by Marietta's Aunt Saling (Perla Bautista), an encounter lands Alex in her room and the two spend the night together. It is here where the stained hand of movie fate intervenes on Stolen Moments, aligning to give Alex what he momentarily wants, only to hold that against him later. When he is with Carol, Borlaza bathes him in light. These sequences are overwhelmingly sensual and intimate, Rodriguez showing us just how significantly he was remaking not only screen acting, but also definitions of masculinity. His men were not afraid to expose their vulnerability to the point of emotional ruin.
On Carol’s arm, Alex is soft and tender, takes shape and comes to life. The heightened romance of their love scene is shot tight and up close. Carol, we are encouraged to believe, sees something in Alex no-one else can. Lust in all of its beautiful and gruesome detail plague the film and the expressionist imagery find a deft balance of heightened representation. The camera lingers on Rodriguez’s and Moreno's faces every time they enter a scene. They swim, swept away in abandon and love. Alex and Carol's romance is sincere and it hurts. Since his basic upbringing—a composite background of slums from which he chose to escape—does not permit him to callously desert Marietta. The film undercuts the central couple with moments of selfishness that compound with little regard for the woman caught in their path. Rodriguez's portrayal, often terse and hesitating is generally credible. For Moreno, at least, the histrionics are of a quality so far beyond anything she has done previously. Borlaza must be credited with a minor miracle. Locsin has never been seen to better advantage as Marietta, beset by burgeoning anxieties but clinging to a love she hopes can be rekindled. Rey P.J. Abellana at times seems overly-laconic, but the more serious defect in the screenplay is the difficulty in believing that Fredo, Marietta’s lover could ever get to an emotional pitch leading to some confusion of sympathies on the part of the viewer. Most of the supporting players contribute fitting bits to an impressive mosaic. By making us intuitively understand the attraction of high life and using Marietta’s needy overtures to prick the viewers’s conscience, Borlaza has created a film about the decision between a rich life and a moral life, and the vast confusing grey area in between. Stolen Moments favors the beautiful moment over the sensible story or the moral road taken, it is a tale told with fervor of the pitfalls of falling into ones' emotion.
Sound Supervisor: Joe Climaco
Production Design: Cesar Jose
Director of Photography: Sergio Lobo
Editor: George Jarlego
Screenplay: Jose Javier Reyes
Music: Jaime B. Fabregas
Direction: Maning Borlaza
