Shortfilms

TATLO, DALAWA, ISA

THREE, TWO, ONE
Lino Brocka
Philippinen 1974
129 min
V'09

Lino Brocka's Three, Two, One shows the filmmaker's versatility in the short form, working with various writers: The first segment, Tony Perez's The Shapes of Hope, has Jay Ilagan play Noni, a drug addict struggling in a drug rehabilitation center. It features cinematographer Romy Vitug's fine monochromatic camerawork and the startling image of Ilagan being shaved of all his hair.
Brocka is at his melodramatic best with Mario O'Hara's Hellow, Soldier. Hilda Koronel is Gina, a young slum dweller waiting for her American G.I. father to pick her up and take her to America; Anita Linda is Gina's mother Lucia, who wants her daughter to leave, yet is unable to face the loneliness of life without her. O'Hara's deceptively simple story is an evocative metaphor for any number of themes: the bitterness, the rage, and the lurid legacy left behind by the American occupation - Lucia was unapologetically the American's mistress, and raised the child herself. The troubling questions that arise when someone tries to find a decision: Should Gina live with her mother or father? And what happens to Lucia?
Orlando Nadres' Tomorrow, the Darkness is Brocka's uncharacteristically gothic short masterpiece. Brocka, who has rarely done a period film and who almost always locates his stories in the urgency of the here and now (almost always in the Manila of today), with Vitug's help creates an almost airless, languid realm, not so much isolated as abandoned by the outside world. (Noel Vera)

Credits
  • Romy Vitug
  • Augusto Salvador
  • Minda Azarcon
CineManila
Video (Digi Beta)
col
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