Divining Ms. D

Dina Bonnevie’s glow is different these days. You can even describe it as incandescent.

Seated across a group of press people at the highest floor of the Viva Films office in Quezon City, she answers each question with spunk – a far cry from the initially timid Lupe she plays in the Metro Filmfest possible entry Tatarin based on Nick Joaquin’s tale around an old ritual that brings out all the wanton wildness of pagan practices. Like Lupe, the character she plays, Dina was meek and mild to her husband (they’re now separated) – Vic Sotto. She served him hand and foot the way Lupe was husband Don Paeng Moreta (Edu Manzano’s) slave.

Dina, raised in the conservative ways of the Spaniards since childhood believing that her husband was lord of the manor no less. Thus, she allowed herself to be seen, but not heard on parties.

"Helen (Gamboa-Sotto, married to Sen. Tito Sotto) and I were just whispering to ourselves, while only Ali (now separated from former husband Maru) had the guts to smoke in front of our in-laws," recalls Dina.

After quitting showbiz and saying goodbye to her then highly-promising career, Dina settled down to a life of subservience, bringing food to her husband on a neatly-arranged tray, becoming full-time and mother to Danica and Oyo Boy, now teenagers both.

Until infidelity reared its ugly head and Vic and Dina’s marriage fell like a deck of cards. Dina, as we all know by now, remarried, had another failed union, and has since moved on.

Now, she raises her chin up high and proudly proclaims, "I’m happy on my own. Because I have enough love for myself, my happiness doesn’t depend on a man the way it used to."

True enough, Dina is now very much her own woman . She takes the courses she wants: computer, French, painting. She runs her own company, a shipping firm that has been around for years. No one can tell her what to do with her life. She’s in full control of everything.

She was the one and only choice for the role of Lupe, a part so coveted many seasoned actresses longed to make it their own.

Why, she can even make requests about her leading man, and get her wish! In Tatarin, for instance, Dina asked Viva Films to cast Edu in the role of her Spanish aristocrat-husband Paeng, and voila, her wish was granted. Soon, she’ll make a film with Fernando Poe Jr., the King of Philippine Movies himself. It’s a charmed life, and Dina attributes it to the way her parents raised her. Boy, was her patrician dad strict.

"He’d lay sleeping mat in front of a suitor and intercept love letters that came with the flowers. He had me driven to and fetched during my junior-senior prom, and I hated it." Dina recalls her growing-up years.

His way of discipline was physical. Dina knelt on mongo seeds and felt the lash of her Dad’s thick belt against her skin when she misbeheved. "He told us in Spanish that we should study, study, study. We were also taught how to cross and uncross our legs, to behave during meals, to wear our Sunday best in church.

Oh, how I hated it," Dina adds.

And even when they had a house in M. Paterno, San Juan, Dina’s dad put her in a college dorm, where she learned to be independent: washing her clothes, cooking her own food, walking to school all by her lonesome.

"That’s why I can cook well these days," Dina crows.

Her mother was just as spartan in bringing up her children. She sent the maid away every summer so her children can learn practical skills on their own.

Thus did Dina learn the home arts – crocheting, embroidery, even darning socks with a shell inside it for best effect.

Dina’s home is now a testament to her home-grown skills. It is adorned with table napkins she embroidered herself, and crocheted items she herself made.

This kind of discipline has served Dina in good stead in her work and in her personal life. When she had to wear seven layers of skirts that prevented her from moving about while shooting the period film that is Tatarin, Dina must have had her Dad’s stern look in mind as she endured the discomfort of it all.

"It took the hairstylists two hours to come up with the right look for my hair. First, they put pin curls. That took them an hour. Then they placed crimpers which made my hair look like the Sto. Nino," relates Dina.

Her weight went down from 120 to 112 pounds while doing Tatarin, because of all the sweat that trickled down her legs while wearing the voluminous ternos of the 1920s, and going with the cast and crew to various locations in search of the right balete tree for the set. Someone raised in less exacting ways would have balked. Not Dina.

"I wouldn’t be what I am now if not for the way my parents raised me," she admits.

Her parenting style is a far cry from the kind she came to know during her childhood and teenaged years. Besides, Danica finds it old-fashioned.

Dina treats her children, Danica and Oyo Boy, more as friends than little soldiers whom she commands as she pleases.

"I used to belt Danica and make her eat Tabasco when she misbehaved. But that was before. They’re now grown up and can decide on their own," Dina says.

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Time will tell if Dina did right in raising her children. So far, she is proving that even a single mother like her can enrich herself, raise happy, well-adjusted children and have the time of her life.

Dina has shown women can be anything they want – with or without a man by their side. Just like the brave, liberated Lupe she plays with such a passion in Tatarin.