The OB admitting section was, and still is, one of the busiest parts of the hospital I worked in as an intern. It had been renovated prior to my first duty there, and it would be renovated once again after I'd left. Both of those renovations were done in part to address a persistent issue: that the place never runs out of patients. Every day, and especially on Mondays and Fridays, the admitting section would take in a significant number of expectant mothers with all sorts of conditions. Some would be giving birth for the first time. Some were veterans who were familiar to the staff working there, giving birth like clockwork every year. Some had serious conditions alongside their pregnancies that made giving birth extremely complicated, to the point where their current state posed a significant risk for death while giving birth. Nevertheless, they would slowly fill up the adjacent labor and delivery room, often two to three mothers to a stretcher. On very busy days the stretchers would run out, and the labor room would be filled with mothers settling down wherever they could, mostly on the cold, tiled floor.
I remembered those days in the admitting section when I saw Antoinette Jadaone's latest film, Sunshine, about a young gymnast (Maris Racal) who gets pregnant right before a very important event that might lead to the SEA games and eventually the Olympics. Sunshine doesn't have any qualms about making the decision as she immediately gets to work trying to find an abortifacient to terminate the unwanted pregnancy. This process is not made easy. Miggy (Elijah Canlas), the man who impregnated Sunshine, wants nothing to do with her after learning of her pregnancy. He doesn't even tell her to have an abortion directly, only saying that 'she knows what to do.' Getting medical help is equally difficult, and intersects gender with class: medical treatment is expensive (despite the fact that state sponsored healthcare should be financially accessible) and as abortion is still illegal in the Philippines, people resort to black markets to seek the care they need.
Once in a while, the OB admitting section will receive a patient who has lost her child. Miscarriages are common, and often they are spontaneous. Once, a mother of a stillborn child asked me if the cries in the next room were her child's, when I knew the infant was lying in a box, ready to be given to back to their parents. Then there are the other kinds of patients, ones who made a choice like Sunshine. They all had their reasons; this was a conscious and informed decision. After a while you know it when they come in. Sometimes the doctor would come in and tell them that what they did was illegal, some would even threaten to call the police. Nothing ever came of it; they were empty threats - often to 'scare' them into not making that decision again. It always made me uncomfortable.
To be born a woman is to be born into violence, into a world where the odds are stacked against you. Sunshine is not the first film to depict this violence - films like Rae Red's Babae at Baril (2019) and Jadaone's own Fan Girl (2020) are two examples. They show what a deeply patriarchal society creates: people like Miggy and a certain other character near the end, people who I interpreted as not exactly archetypal or allegorical towards the structures that created them, but as the inevitable products of it. But unlike those two films that I mentioned earlier, Sunshine feels far more indignant, full of anger that Fan Girl lacked, and drawing towards a different conclusion compared to Babae at Baril.
Quiapo has been a backdrop for many a Filipino film, and here it is a sanctuary of sorts. It is here where Sunshine goes to find the solution to her problems. Ironically draped in religious imagery, it both embodies the faith it represents (as a source of refuge for those who are in need) and as something that stands against its tenets.
Sunshine is a film about choices: the choice to live one's own dream, the choice to live freely as the best person you can be. Sunshine's sister Geleen (Jennica Garcia) coaches Sunshine as she practices in their shared home. Certain background elements (thanks to the film's excellent production design) hint that Geleen, too, was once an aspiring gymnast, whose dreams ended with a baby. If she had the choice, would she have lived a different life? It shows as well in Geleen's character, and Garcia gives a standout performance as her.
Finally, that idea of "refuge" may not refer to Quiapo, but something else entirely. Throughout the film there are many people, both seen and unseen, who help Sunshine in her quest. "Ipagdadasal ko kayo," a hilot tells Sunshine after they bring a child to the hospital who made the same choice. "Mag-ingat ka," another one tells Sunshine as she sets off. A sympathetic medical professional gives a knowing look.
Every doctor has a story like it: in one of my last rotations at the labor room, a patient walked in nervously in the robe the hospital supplied her. It was a very busy day, and pregnant women overflowed on the stretchers and sat on the floor. She had no business being here: she looked no older than 14, and she should be going to school and playing with friends, not in the last stages of giving birth. Suffice it to say, this pregnancy was not her choice. If she had the choice like Sunshine did, would she be here? On the other hand, the point of the film for me is not whether one makes one choice over the other, but that people like Sunshine and that kid has the ability to choose in the first place.
Because the labor and delivery room should be semi-sterile, companions (in this case, the kid's very worried mother) are not allowed in. But the rest of the mothers in that labor room heard us taking the medical history and heard her story. The other expectant mothers gave the kid their blankets, talked to and comforted her, up until she gave birth. Everyone was that kid's mother that day. In a world where you are denied agency, where one is subjected to violence from birth, the least women can do is find refuge in each other.
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