Insiang

A slum in Manila. Insiang lives with her mother and the house is crowded; the relatives are there too. Her mother throws them all out and takes her own lover in. Dado is young, out of work and sits about the house. Insiang has a fiancé but he cannot make up his mind. One night Dado opens her door. Insiang tells her mother; her mother does not believe her and finds the fault in her daughter. From that day Insiang starts calculating. She shouts at nobody. She knows what to say to whom and when to say it. Lino Brocka directs. Hilda Koronel plays Insiang, Mona Lisa her mother and Ruel Vernal plays Dado. It is a Filipino production, made in 1976. It was the first Filipino production shown at the Cannes Film Festival. It was shot in an actual slum and the place works inside the narrative; there is no privacy and the neighbours hear everything. The matter it treats is what poverty turns relations into; the film does not give it as a moral lesson. The narrative does not offer revenge as a resolution; Insiang wins and what she wins gives her nothing. The mother is its most complicated side; she does not protect her daughter because she is afraid of losing her own last company. The final scene is in a prison and is built on a look rather than on speech. Brocka is among the best known directors of Filipino cinema and this is his most widely shown work. Its limit is the watching; the narrative is harsh, the subject heavy, and the film gives relief nowhere. Who it is for: viewers who like Filipino cinema and social realist drama. Who it is not for: it is bleak, hard, and the ending cold.