Noel was Alma not wasted on MGA BILANGGONG BIRHEN, is it really good?
Sounds like Peter Weir's PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK......the movie I mean.
Heck no; it has no pretenses, unlike Weir's overblown 'experimental' film.
Alma has a small part; she's effective enough. The real protagonists are Mario Montenegro, Leroy Salvador, and, believe it or not, Armida Siguion-Reyna, who is wonderful and, believe it or not, quite
beautiful in it--I mean, she practically
glows.
It's beautifully shot (one of Romy Vitug's best works), extravagantly produced, and quite lyrical. And it looks with equal measures of sympathy and skepticism at both upper and lower classes, unlike
Oro, Plata, which tended to demonize the lower classes.
Sure, you got Ronnie Lazaro, but he feels more like a mythical figure (his name is Hermes, right?) than a real person. In
Bilanggong Birhen, you feel the full weight, nobility, and flaws of
all the characters, upper
and lower classes.
O'Hara disowns it; he was fired near the end of shooting, and he walked away. Romy Suzara finished postroduction, and it shows: the editing is off by about a mile (
every O'Hara film has precise editing--every one of them). Flawed, heavily, but still, it's great, great, great.
Nick Deocampo once said Raymond Red was around the age of O'Hara when he directed
Sakay (Red was 28; O'Hara 31), which is roughly the same time period (American Occupation), tho O'Hara's production was far more elaborate. Deocampo thought O'Hara did a far better job than Red ever did.