Superstar
Nora Aunor Fan Site
From Noel Vera's post on

Pinoy DVD forum's The Nora Aunor Thread

Just finished watching Mario O'Hara's "Bulaklak ng City Jail" and my
god, what a royal flush of wonderful performances: Maya Valdez is
villainous and comic at the same time as the prison's majordomo;
Zenaida Amador is terrifically butch as the "mayora"; Gina Alajar is
completely natural and without her usual mannerisms as a fellow
prisoner; Perla Bautista has the "Sisa" role, a crazed mother looking
for her dead child--full of pathos, yet completly under control; Maritess
Gutierrez and Gloria Romero in their one scene together are
heartbreaking; Celia Rodriguez--the hardened whore whose one soft
spot is her wayward son--even more so.  

Even the tiny roles--German Moreno as a sinister jail warden, Edwin
O'Hara (who usually plays rapists) as the prison chaplain; Ricky Davao
as Nora Aunor's boyfriend, the various character actors and non-actors
who play guards, vendors, police officers, street people--shine.

I haven't even begun talking about the filmmaking--the precise editing,
the wonderful musical cuing (never too much music, never too
melodramatic), the corridor compositions, the grimly realistic lighting,
the endless close-ups that save money because only very small areas
are lit, yet at the same time give you a sense of intense
claustrophobia--you feel from all the tight shots how this is one
nightmare of an overcrowded prison.  

With all this going on, you'd think Nora Aunor's performance would be
lost; on the contrary, they only enhance it.  In the beginning, she's only
one of many colorful characters; by the film's end, she's the undoubted
heroine, and the miracle is, you don't quite know how she got there.  
Her acting here is so quiet--the showiest moments are when the
camera focuses on her eyes, and you can see the fire in them.  Aunor
just may be the dumbest, most unthinking actress alive--and with the
way she conducts her life to date, who's to say she isn't?  Yet maybe
she has to be, to be so incredibly intuitive--to be able to create this kind
of magic, almost as if out of nowhere.  She doesn't need words, she
doesn't need thoughts, she doesn't need anything--she just needs
silence, and those impossibly intense eyes...