Extraordinary opening shots of a sea of heads, all more or less the same height, bobbing. An abstraction of individual people and also of a people. Amidst the  bobbing mass, a rope appears, attached to a brightly dressed icon of a suffering virgin, frenzied faithful abandoning themselves to worship.

The film is  about a young woman (Nora Aunor) who falls in love with an actor (Philip Salvador), who ends up being no more than an extra. She leaves her middle-class family for him, cleans, bathes, feeds him – he’s got a thing about having his baths a particular way, the way his mother used to do it for him. She even sleeps with him. He brings other women and she puts up with it. She’s his willing slave. Until the end of the film, where he’s decided to immigrate with a rich widow. She can’t go with him; she can no longer return to the family, she boils the water for his bath and scalds him alive with it. Enough is enough. A terrific film in a beautiful new restoration.

Seen at Ritrovato

José Arroyo