Nasaan Ka Man: Star power and much more

There is something about Star Cinema’s Nasaan Ka Man that is personally appealing to me as a viewer. Maybe it’s because of the Baguio setting. I love Baguio and any movie that is set there – from Mike de Leon’s classic romance Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising to Dolphy and Maritess Revilla’s horror-comedy Dracula Goes to RP – becomes visually attractive to me.

I like Nasaan Ka Man – maybe because it stars two of the country’s finest actresses: Hilda Koronel and Gloria Diaz who, as to be expected, both deliver delicious performances here. And then you add in three competent young performers – Claudine Barretto, Jericho Rosales and Diether Ocampo and the whole thing becomes an acting showcase of brilliant talents.

But maybe the reason I like Nasaan Ka Man is that it’s really a very well-made movie – the film debut of Cholo Laurel, a TV commercial director, who I was told trained mostly with Ricky Lee, who co-wrote the script.

Although a first time director, Cholo Laurel obviously knows what he is doing. He has a great eye for visuals and is a master at orchestrating the other technical elements of a film.

The theme of Nasaan Ka Man is actually complicated and delicate. The story revolves around three young people – Claudine Barretto, Jericho Rosales and Diether Ocampo – all adopted kids of spinster sisters Gloria Diaz and Hilda Koronel. When Claudine and Jericho fall in love with each other, the conservative foster mother Gloria Diaz puts her foot down and disapproves of the romance – never mind if the two young lovers are not really related by blood. But that is just one of the conflicts in the story of the multi-layered Nasaan Ka Man, which has a lot of twists and turns to it.

Nasaan Ka Man actually has a little of Wuthering Heights, Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Sixth Sense, The Others and even Portrait of the Artist as Filipino – what with Gloria and Hilda playing aging sisters there.

The viewer, in fact, will have difficulty in the beginning trying to figure out what the film is all about. It is a romance, a suspense-mystery or a horror movie? I won’t tell you anymore what it is. However, I can assure you that it is a finely-crafted movie. Even those themes "borrowed" from other films are well put together in Nasaan Ka Man. (The film opens in theaters on June 15.)

I like it so much that I am even willing to forgive its one flaw: A conflict in the story that the movie tries to resolve in a not-so-satisfactory manner as far as the viewer is concerned.

In the Cinema Evaluation Board deliberations, Nasaan Ka Man could have easily gotten a grade of A had it not been for this one problem in the storytelling. (It’s something about "believability."). In the end of the film got a grade of B – which is more than good enough.

Without that one flaw (the film could have been near perfect), I can go on and on gushing about Nasaan Ka Man because of the very creative and yet realistic execution of most of its scenes – whether big or small.

The rape scene of Claudine Barretto (oops, should I have revealed that?), for instance, is truly gripping and seems so real you’d want to rescue her from the clutches of her assailant.

At the same time, there are little nuances all over the film that would endear it to the viewer. Take the characters of Gloria Diaz and Hilda Koronel, for example. They may be deeply religious and prayerful, yet they are fun sisters who drink, smoke and generally enjoy what life has to offer.

There are no black-and-white characters here and this is another reason why I like the film and find it to be very enjoyable.

And while the movie takes advantage of the modern technology in filmmaking to make it the visual feast that it is, the direction, the performances and some over-the-top dialogues somehow bring you back to the golden age of moving pictures – back then when movies were movies.