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| Showtimes | Sun
March 14 6:30 PM / KAB314F Tue March 16 6:00 PM / KAB316A |
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Philippines, 1997, 114 mins,
35mm, color, Tagalog w/e.s.
Director Marilou DIAZ-ABAYA (in person); Screenplay Jun LANA; Exec. Prods. Jimmy DUAVIT, Butch JIMENEZ; Dir. Photography Romy VITUG; Cast Jomari YLLANA, Elizabeth OROPESA, Pen MEDINA
Using the simple rhythms of a fishing village as her palette, director Diaz-Abaya paints a gorgeous and profound picture of love, lust, joy, sorrow, death and life. IN THE NAVEL OF THE SEA brings us back to the more pristine 1950s, as Pepito (Yllana) grows up learning the trade of his mother Rosa (Oropesa), the town midwife. Mindless of gender roles as a child, he becomes an embarrassed teenager reluctant to continue a "woman’s vocation." Meanwhile, we witness a sexual tryst between the recently widowed Rosa and Gusting (Medina), a man whose insatiable libido and lack of birth control has already resulted in a dozen children by his wife Minda. When Rosa has an unwanted pregnancy, she hides in shame and gives up her duties as a midwife.
While the cast may not draw large box-office crowds, it nevertheless boasts some of the most intelligent acting in Philippine cinema today. Beyond the tropes of a rite-of-passage story, the film takes us through Lenten rituals, mermaid sightings and intruding serpents, juxtaposed with the realities of childbirth, parenthood and the needs of the flesh. The result is an ethos motivated by Catholic beliefs and folk myths set against a stunning background of blue sea and sky.
—Michael Magnaye
Presented with ABS-CBN Foundation
and Filipinas