The healing and cathartic effect of Tanging Yaman

Star Cinema’s Metro Filmfest 2000 entry, Tanging Yaman, directorial comeback of the long-missed Laurice Guillen, is the kind of movie that will prick the conscience of moviegoers and make them look at themselves and whatever differences exist in their own families, a movie that will be remembered for a long, long time because every character in it represents every member of everybody else’s families.

First and foremost is Dolores "Loleng" Rosales, played by Gloria Romero who’s celebrating her 50th anniversary as an actress this year, the matriarch of the disintegrating Rosales clan. Loleng is not herself most of the time, afflicted as she is with Alzheimer’s disease that renders her virtually invulnerable to the ongoing feud among the family members.

At the family gathering when Loleng hardly recognizes her children and grandchildren, several moviegoers will surely see their own mothers and themselves in the situation. It’s a scene that will touch the hearts of moviegoers who will see it as the same incident that happened in their own families.

There’s also Danny, played by Johnny Delgado, eldest of Loleng’s three children who’s spoiled and hardly has any ambitions in life and yet craving to have the family possessions and wealth all to himself and his family (wife Hilda Koronel and their children).

There’s Art, too, played by Edu Manzano, a successful lawyer who looks down on Danny and who wants his son, Jericho Rosales, to be a doctor against the son’s will, a common practice (choosing a college course for children) among Filipino families.

You and I will also see a sister in Grace, played By Dina Bonnevie, the prodigal daughter disowned by the family for marrying a poor guy (Joel Torre).

The theme of Tanging Yaman is most fitting indeed in this season of the year when everybody is family-conscious, Christmas being a time for family reunions and family togetherness. Like Star Cinema’s hit family drama Anak, Tanging Yaman will hit moviegoers where it should – in the heart – and everybody is expected to come out of the moviehouse with a cathartic feeling, hopefully with a desire to iron out kinks in their own families.

"The movie has a healing effect," said Gloria Romero who recalled having cried even while only reading the script. "I could not stop crying. It’s a role of a lifetime, a role I would have regretted the rest of my life if I didn’t do it."

Besides the senior members of the cast (Gloria, Edu, Hilda, Dina and Johnny), Tanging Yaman also features only the brightest young stars of Star Cinema and the ABS-CBN Talent Center, playing the children of the Rosales Clan, such as Marvin Agustin, Carol Banawa, Janette McBride, Dominic Ochoa and others.

Tanging Yaman is a fitting adieu to the old millennium and heart-warming way of ushering in the new millennium for the movie industry.