Drama in the Philippine slums

Posted ON  14.10.2015 at 9:10AM

Insiang, Lino Brocka 1976 - Long before the prolific Brillante Mendoza, Lino Brocka was for quite some time the only major Filipino filmmaker. His ability to plunge the audience into a specific universe (in this case, the overcrowded slums) is relentless. Insiang is indeed a portrait of a beautiful, poor girl, who has no choice but to show her fearlessness. It is also, by extension, a vision of a world of survival, and of great generosity, where everyone wonders how the other is going to eat. In the end, it is a world preoccupied by the same great universal concerns that come to light: love, its wishes and its little cruelties.

Shopkeepers comment on the size of the legs of one lady. Another is offended that Insiang's mother can live with a man who could be her son. Away from it all, in modest withdrawal, Insiang, in her outfits of feminine or geometric patterns, crosses the world and looks inward, continuously trying to understand where she fits in. What can fate have in store for her? …What is striking is the visual beauty of the image, worthy of the greatest photographers of contemporary art. The film's vivid beauty, composed of t-shirts of strong colors, huge plastic bins, brooding skies amid corrugated metal, skin dripping with sweat and dangerous nightfall… absolutely everything is revealed inside the changing state of the young woman: her well kept hopes and fears and most especially her disappointments. Having the right to reject a failed love affair and deciding to choose revenge tips Insiang (in an apparent social commentary film, then), toward a mad ancient Greek tragedy. A gem well worth discovering.

Virginie Apiou