I'm privileged to have been raised by many mothers. When my biological mother was out there working hard to help keep the family afloat, many others (titas, grandmothers and even otherwise complete strangers who became family) stepped up to the plate. True parenthood is not something merely passed on by blood, it is a constant and continuous decision to love someone beyond love, beyond what is normally expected.
For Twinkle (Vice Ganda), that is a responsibility that was thrust upon her, but one that she took willingly: after receiving a young baby from one of the beauty queens she was coaching, she decides to raise the child as her own. When she plans to move to Hong Kong to work at Disneyland, the fact that she hasn't officially adopted the now 10-year old Angelo (Lucas Andalio) becomes a problem. Now, she has to contact Angelo's bio mom, the popular and successful Mara (Nadine Lustre), in order to officially cement her status as Angelo's mother.
What I expected was something akin to a certain comedic sequence in the beginning of Jun Lana's Call Me Mother: a campy, humorous war of oneupsmanship where one party is clearly branded as the villainous biological mother and the other, the virtuous hardworking mother who truly loves her son. But Jun Lana takes a different path, as it recognizes both Mara and Twinkle's point of view. Mara's decision to initially let go of Angelo was one heavily influenced by parental and social pressures. (Interestingly, Angelo's dad is barely mentioned at all).
It also touches upon queer anxieties towards the right of parenthood, especially in a conservative society like ours. This topic has been explored before as well, with one of the earliest examples being Lino Brocka's Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (1978), where a gay beautician (Dolphy) takes care of the young son (Niño Muhlach) of the man he loves. In Call Me Mother, Twinkle fears the idea of her son being taken away - mostly due to Mara having the legal leverage over her status as an informal mother. But I wonder how much it's also because, through decades of internalization and conservative social conditioning, she thinks she's fighting against a society that doesn't want people like her to be parents in the first place. To be fair, in the film, Twinkle's social worker Mutya (Chanda Romero) never judges Twinkle for her sexual orientation during the adoption process, and neither does Mara. I suppose, with our society having changed in the interim since Ang Tatay Kong Nanay, it's not as big of a factor as before.
The film is carried by excellent performances from Nadine Lustre and Vice Ganda, both flexing their dramatic chops in a confrontation scene that trades the steady, one-take precision of last year's And the Breadwinner Is... with a raw, handheld scene fueled by sheer acting prowess. With a mix of trademark laughs and melodrama, it looks like the Jun Lana-Vice tandem is a solid one, and I look forward to future collaborations.
If the previous film asked us what it means to be a mother, this film, Kip Oebanda's followup to the 2017 hit Bar Boys, asks us: what does it mean to be a lawyer?
I've always found law school fascinating. While I don't think I have the chops for law, I enjoy the discussions and the use of sound logic to interpret cases and judgements. It's also a field of work that entails service, one that is often thankless. As someone in a similar field of work, I can relate to that.
Bar Boys: After School returns to our titular boys ten years after the events of the first film. Torran (Rocco Nacino) is now a law professor, who also makes principled stances in his law practice. Chris (Enzo Pineda) who spent the last film fighting for his girlfriend, is now seen separating from his now ex-wife. Erik (Carlo Aquino) spends his time working for a non-profit rights organization, while Josh (Kean Cipriano), now having retired after a successful acting career, finally takes up law for good. They're joined by Torran's students (Sassa Gurl, Therese Malvar and Will Ashley), each aiming to pass the bar exams after graduation.
With at least seven plot threads (one for each character, and that's not counting the film's central plot involving a labor dispute with farmers), the film often runs the risk of collapsing under its own weight. Some character stories are given only a little time in the story itself, or told only through side stories in the credits. Ultimately, the film is held together by a solid ensemble cast, with special mention to Odette Khan, who reprises her role as retired Associate Justice (and former professor) Hernandez. Hernandez ties all of the narrative threads together with her mentorship; in her last days, she embodies the consummate lawyer passing on her wisdom to the next generation.
The rest of the characters have their own time to shine (Will Ashley, Kean Cipriano, Rocco Nacino and the prolific Carlo Aquino are standouts) and make for some genuinely entertaining moments. It's talky most of the time, with some segments making it feel like you're in the law school classroom with them. While it may not be for everyone, for people like me who find legal discussions fascinating, these segments are scripted in a way that I personally found engrossing. For many who enjoyed the first film (including myself), it's just a treat to spend time with these characters again.
To be a lawyer is to be invisible, says Professor Hernandez in a heart to heart talk with Erik. It is inherent to their job. But while they may not be remembered by history, they are the ones that help make it. Throughout the film Torran's students (and Torran and co. themselves) ask themselves why they wanted to be lawyers in the first place, and if it was all worth it. Like all things, the practice of law is a conscious decision to live a life of service, and not a decision taken lightly. Most of it stems from a conscious, human desire to advocate for one's rights, which is baked into what it means to live in society at large.
Celine (Angelica Panganiban) and Ivan (Zanjoe Marudo) are having their marriages annulled. Not to each other, mind you: Celine's tired of her husband Stephen (Tom Rodriguez) and his narcissistic, controlling tendencies, while Ivan's wife Maya (Solenn Heusaff) wants to split with her husband for reasons that will soon become clear. After accidentally being scheduled with a lawyer appointment together, the two bond over their similar situation.
Jeffrey Jeturian's UnMarry details the long, costly and arduous process towards getting a marriage annulled in the Philippines, one of only two countries in the world where it is the only legal recourse to ending a marriage. It doesn't cast either party as particularly villainous, painting them not as complete monsters, but as flawed, sometimes broken people. Refreshingly, it injects nuance into each character's motivations, and it's easy to understand why each character does the things that they do. It's all thanks to a snappy, solid script by Chris Martinez and Therese Cayaba and committed performances by both Panganiban and Marudo.
The film is relatively safe and formulaic in terms of form and is shot pretty conventionally, but in familiar, romantic-melodramatic tropes it serves its purpose. During the film there were lots of murmurs in the engaged crowd about the annulment proceedings. As an informative guide to something that's not often discussed in Filipino society, having such a film in a wide reaching, national setting like the MMFF is something I can get behind.
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