MOVIE REVIEW: Bona (1980)
SOURCE: The Urian Anthology 1980-1989
REVIEW: Bona
Nestor U. Torre, Philippines Daily Express, 1981
Obsession
“Bona” is a story of obsession, the tragedy of the fan turned fanatic. It delves
into what causes an otherwise sensible girl to throw discretion and self-
respect to the wind to serve her beloved. In the fan-atical context of Philippine
movies, it is a story that needs to be told.
Interestingly, it is told by Director Lino Brocka, who admits to having been a
movie fan himself during his childhood years in the province, but who has
since eschewed all that hysteria in favor of making substantial movies, most of
which have gone against the fan syndrome. Even more tellingly, the title role
of the fan is acted by superstar Nora Aunor, who also used to be a movie fan
and is now the golden goddess at whose feet of clay the greatest number of
the country’s fans prostrate themselves.
Clearly, Brocka, Aunor and writer Cenen Ramos know the phenomenon
whereof they speak. The intimate knowledge makes for a film that rings true
both for the expert in abnormal psychology and for the gaga movie fan
reliving his dream and high nightmare in the audience.
Movies play an abnormally important part in Philippine life. They offer escape,
cheap thrills, and idealized pluperfection, and the trapped, bored, and
nondescript citizen laps them up as though they were the perfect alternative
to the grossly imperfect reality of his life. In truth, the movies offer no
alternative at all, since alternatives must be first real and accessible in order
to be viable. The illusion proffered by our movies is ultimately nothing
more than sad delusion.
But the diehard fan agrees to be deluded. He is happy to believe the beautiful
lies of the cinema, because, by his gnomic standards, a beautiful lie is better
than ugly truth of existence. For most fans, this delusion is just a lark, a
temporary psychic vacation from the hard facts of living, a pleasant daydream
from which he can awaken with no serious hangovers.
For a few, however, the delusion becomes their new reality, and their lives are
wrecked by it. They become so totally wrapped up in their film idols that they
lose their own sense of self, and self-worth. The idol becomes everything, the
fan is reduced to nothing. The name of the psychological game of is
obsession.
“Bona” is obsessed, not with a superstar, but with a bit player (Phillip
Salvador). Even by movie-fan standards, that’s terribly gauche! Going ga-ga
over Christopher de Leon is one thing, but flipping for a mangy bit player is
something else again. “Wa’” class! But Bona couldn’t care less. In her
fantasticating little mind, the bit player is Christopher de Leon, Lito Lapid and
Lloyd Samartino combined, with Alfie Anido thrown into the bargain.
To serve him utterly, she braves rain, hunger, the scorn of her “decent”
family, the illness and ultimate death of her father, the subsequent anger of
her brother, the pain of seeing her idol bedding other women, the ordeal of
having to arrange for the abortion of one of the girls he’s so casually
impregnated, and the shame of having to “service” him sexually without the
slightest reciprocation of love or even gratitude on his part.
In the end, the nasty man announces that he’s leaving the country with his
latest and wealthiest inamorata. Bona, who has taken all the shit he’s casually
thrown her way, can take no more. She kills the bastard. In the process, she
has hopefully killed her insane obsession for him. Or maybe she has also
killed herself.
What a story! The film is set in fetid Philippine slum, but it is so strong that it
may well have been set in a theater in ancient Greece, where the most
powerful and incomprehensible of human emotions rivaled the monumental
tantrums of the gods.
There are reports that this film will be sent as the Philippine entry to the
Cannes Film Festival. Initially, the story is so “small” that there would seem to
be little about it to recommend it to an international audience of critics and
jurors. On the other hand, the film’s obsession with obsession reminds us
more than a little of Roman Polanski and his “Repulsion” and we remember
that was a “small” film too but its obsessive force made a major impact on film
experts around the world. The same could be true for Brocka and his
“Bona.”
Strangely enough, the best performance in “Bona” is turned in, not by Nora
Aunor in the title role, but by Phillip Salvador as the bit player who is her idol,
her nemesis, and her obsession. Nora is all over the place and gives the role
everything she’s got. Indeed, on the afternoon I saw the film, the theater was
filled with her fans, and they were shrieking and swooning over her “dramatic
highlights.” Nora knows when to be simple, when to be subtle, and when to let
go of her emotional stops. She is truly a consummate, intelligent actress, and
clearly deserves the praise of critics and the adulation of her fans.
Trouble is, she is too intelligent for her part. Obsession is born of emotional
weakness, a psychological vacuum that the idol is idealized into filling. As
Aunor portrays her on screen, Bona is too sensible and savvy a woman to
make this act of self-delusion plausible.
She is also a mite too old for the role. Granted, there are “diehard” fans in
their fifties and sixties, but the character of Bona, as written. Is clearly
intended for a young girl (She is supposed to be still a student, for one thing).
The character’s innocence would account for much of her naivete, and Nora
does manage the Naïve but, but it feels a little forced. On the other hand, the
fact that he, too is no longer a spring chicken helps Salvador in his portrayal
of the trying-hard bit player who is destined to be a has-been even before he
has been anything at all. His age makes the character even more pathetic.
Salvador has a perfect feel for the bit player’s braggadocio in public, his
private fears, his dimwitted dreams and his casual cruelty. Stardom is his own
obsession, and his failure to achieve it consumes him as much as her failure
to possess him consumes Bona in the end. I’m surprised that Salvador didn’t
win the Best Actor award at the Metro Filmfest last month (so what else is
new?).
Director Brocka, writer Ramones, and cinematographer Conrado Baltazar
work wonders in seeing this slim and deceptively simple story through to its
tragic conclusion. From apparently casual events, they fashion a structure of
portents and symbols that are evinced not just for artistic show-and-tell but for
forceful dramatic force.
As they see it, Bona is fire and the bit player is water, and one must either
douse the other or set him or her to a murderous boil. For most of the film, it
is Bona who must bank on her fires and drown in the ocean of her idol’s
needs and ingratitude. In the end, however, fire finally asserts itself, and the
bit player’s goose is literally cooked (along with the bit player!).
True enough, the ending is much too prolonged and melodramatic for
comfort. Obviously, symbols and portents have a way of getting mired in self-
importance. And our interest in the film does flag at certain points, when the
loose ends prove to be too close for their, and our, own good. But the basic
soundness of the film’s premise, plus the importance of its theme, particularly
in this movie-mad Philippines, sees the film through these rough spots.
Exceptional performances are also turned in by members of the supporting
cast---in particular, Venchito Galvez as Bona’s father and the ensemble
playing the various neighbors and friends in the film’s slum setting.
Some people want to know: Why are most of Brocka’s films set in the slums?
Obviously, these people have mud and proletarian bonhomie coming out of
their ears. Well, to each his own consciousness. Fact: there are many slums
in the Philippines. Fact: not everything in the Philippines is a slum. Directors
react to those two facts as the spirit moves them.
Brocka makes films about slums; fritz Ynfante makes “Forbes”--- who is to say
which is “better” for each director, other than the director involved?
Second question: Doesn’t Brocka's predilection for slum stories limit him as a
director, and make his work repetitive and therefore ultimately predictable and
boring? Yes. But tell that to Brocka and he won’t be wishing you a Happy New
Year. So what? So, nothing. In directing, subjectivity is all. You want Brocka to
expand his horizon as a director? He has to want it himself before anything will
happen. And that will come, in his own good time.
Final question: “Will “Bona’s” tragic story open the eyes of our movie fans and
teach them to be less obsessive?” It doesn’t look like it. When I saw the film,
the fans around me were suffering every inch the way with Nora, but they
were “ecstatically.” They saw the film, not as an indictment, but as their
apotheosis. Susan Roces has nothing to worry about; for that matter, neither
does Nora Aunor.
SOURCE: The Urian Anthology 1980-1989
REVIEW: Bona
Nestor U. Torre, Philippines Daily Express, 1981
Obsession
“Bona” is a story of obsession, the tragedy of the fan turned fanatic. It delves
into what causes an otherwise sensible girl to throw discretion and self-
respect to the wind to serve her beloved. In the fan-atical context of Philippine
movies, it is a story that needs to be told.
Interestingly, it is told by Director Lino Brocka, who admits to having been a
movie fan himself during his childhood years in the province, but who has
since eschewed all that hysteria in favor of making substantial movies, most of
which have gone against the fan syndrome. Even more tellingly, the title role
of the fan is acted by superstar Nora Aunor, who also used to be a movie fan
and is now the golden goddess at whose feet of clay the greatest number of
the country’s fans prostrate themselves.
Clearly, Brocka, Aunor and writer Cenen Ramos know the phenomenon
whereof they speak. The intimate knowledge makes for a film that rings true
both for the expert in abnormal psychology and for the gaga movie fan
reliving his dream and high nightmare in the audience.
Movies play an abnormally important part in Philippine life. They offer escape,
cheap thrills, and idealized pluperfection, and the trapped, bored, and
nondescript citizen laps them up as though they were the perfect alternative
to the grossly imperfect reality of his life. In truth, the movies offer no
alternative at all, since alternatives must be first real and accessible in order
to be viable. The illusion proffered by our movies is ultimately nothing
more than sad delusion.
But the diehard fan agrees to be deluded. He is happy to believe the beautiful
lies of the cinema, because, by his gnomic standards, a beautiful lie is better
than ugly truth of existence. For most fans, this delusion is just a lark, a
temporary psychic vacation from the hard facts of living, a pleasant daydream
from which he can awaken with no serious hangovers.
For a few, however, the delusion becomes their new reality, and their lives are
wrecked by it. They become so totally wrapped up in their film idols that they
lose their own sense of self, and self-worth. The idol becomes everything, the
fan is reduced to nothing. The name of the psychological game of is
obsession.
“Bona” is obsessed, not with a superstar, but with a bit player (Phillip
Salvador). Even by movie-fan standards, that’s terribly gauche! Going ga-ga
over Christopher de Leon is one thing, but flipping for a mangy bit player is
something else again. “Wa’” class! But Bona couldn’t care less. In her
fantasticating little mind, the bit player is Christopher de Leon, Lito Lapid and
Lloyd Samartino combined, with Alfie Anido thrown into the bargain.
To serve him utterly, she braves rain, hunger, the scorn of her “decent”
family, the illness and ultimate death of her father, the subsequent anger of
her brother, the pain of seeing her idol bedding other women, the ordeal of
having to arrange for the abortion of one of the girls he’s so casually
impregnated, and the shame of having to “service” him sexually without the
slightest reciprocation of love or even gratitude on his part.
In the end, the nasty man announces that he’s leaving the country with his
latest and wealthiest inamorata. Bona, who has taken all the shit he’s casually
thrown her way, can take no more. She kills the bastard. In the process, she
has hopefully killed her insane obsession for him. Or maybe she has also
killed herself.
What a story! The film is set in fetid Philippine slum, but it is so strong that it
may well have been set in a theater in ancient Greece, where the most
powerful and incomprehensible of human emotions rivaled the monumental
tantrums of the gods.
There are reports that this film will be sent as the Philippine entry to the
Cannes Film Festival. Initially, the story is so “small” that there would seem to
be little about it to recommend it to an international audience of critics and
jurors. On the other hand, the film’s obsession with obsession reminds us
more than a little of Roman Polanski and his “Repulsion” and we remember
that was a “small” film too but its obsessive force made a major impact on film
experts around the world. The same could be true for Brocka and his
“Bona.”
Strangely enough, the best performance in “Bona” is turned in, not by Nora
Aunor in the title role, but by Phillip Salvador as the bit player who is her idol,
her nemesis, and her obsession. Nora is all over the place and gives the role
everything she’s got. Indeed, on the afternoon I saw the film, the theater was
filled with her fans, and they were shrieking and swooning over her “dramatic
highlights.” Nora knows when to be simple, when to be subtle, and when to let
go of her emotional stops. She is truly a consummate, intelligent actress, and
clearly deserves the praise of critics and the adulation of her fans.
Trouble is, she is too intelligent for her part. Obsession is born of emotional
weakness, a psychological vacuum that the idol is idealized into filling. As
Aunor portrays her on screen, Bona is too sensible and savvy a woman to
make this act of self-delusion plausible.
She is also a mite too old for the role. Granted, there are “diehard” fans in
their fifties and sixties, but the character of Bona, as written. Is clearly
intended for a young girl (She is supposed to be still a student, for one thing).
The character’s innocence would account for much of her naivete, and Nora
does manage the Naïve but, but it feels a little forced. On the other hand, the
fact that he, too is no longer a spring chicken helps Salvador in his portrayal
of the trying-hard bit player who is destined to be a has-been even before he
has been anything at all. His age makes the character even more pathetic.
Salvador has a perfect feel for the bit player’s braggadocio in public, his
private fears, his dimwitted dreams and his casual cruelty. Stardom is his own
obsession, and his failure to achieve it consumes him as much as her failure
to possess him consumes Bona in the end. I’m surprised that Salvador didn’t
win the Best Actor award at the Metro Filmfest last month (so what else is
new?).
Director Brocka, writer Ramones, and cinematographer Conrado Baltazar
work wonders in seeing this slim and deceptively simple story through to its
tragic conclusion. From apparently casual events, they fashion a structure of
portents and symbols that are evinced not just for artistic show-and-tell but for
forceful dramatic force.
As they see it, Bona is fire and the bit player is water, and one must either
douse the other or set him or her to a murderous boil. For most of the film, it
is Bona who must bank on her fires and drown in the ocean of her idol’s
needs and ingratitude. In the end, however, fire finally asserts itself, and the
bit player’s goose is literally cooked (along with the bit player!).
True enough, the ending is much too prolonged and melodramatic for
comfort. Obviously, symbols and portents have a way of getting mired in self-
importance. And our interest in the film does flag at certain points, when the
loose ends prove to be too close for their, and our, own good. But the basic
soundness of the film’s premise, plus the importance of its theme, particularly
in this movie-mad Philippines, sees the film through these rough spots.
Exceptional performances are also turned in by members of the supporting
cast---in particular, Venchito Galvez as Bona’s father and the ensemble
playing the various neighbors and friends in the film’s slum setting.
Some people want to know: Why are most of Brocka’s films set in the slums?
Obviously, these people have mud and proletarian bonhomie coming out of
their ears. Well, to each his own consciousness. Fact: there are many slums
in the Philippines. Fact: not everything in the Philippines is a slum. Directors
react to those two facts as the spirit moves them.
Brocka makes films about slums; fritz Ynfante makes “Forbes”--- who is to say
which is “better” for each director, other than the director involved?
Second question: Doesn’t Brocka's predilection for slum stories limit him as a
director, and make his work repetitive and therefore ultimately predictable and
boring? Yes. But tell that to Brocka and he won’t be wishing you a Happy New
Year. So what? So, nothing. In directing, subjectivity is all. You want Brocka to
expand his horizon as a director? He has to want it himself before anything will
happen. And that will come, in his own good time.
Final question: “Will “Bona’s” tragic story open the eyes of our movie fans and
teach them to be less obsessive?” It doesn’t look like it. When I saw the film,
the fans around me were suffering every inch the way with Nora, but they
were “ecstatically.” They saw the film, not as an indictment, but as their
apotheosis. Susan Roces has nothing to worry about; for that matter, neither
does Nora Aunor.
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