An actress’ grace & a director’s gratitude

MANILA, Philippines - A shining gem in the nine-film diadem that is the ongoing National Film Festival’s All Masters Edition from the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), Largavista Production’s Ano ang Kulay ng Mga Nakalimutang Pangarap? brought back memories of Tony Mabesa’s Taghoy ng Troya, staged in the ’70s at the now desolate Metropolitan Theater, adapted from Euripides’ Trojan Women (Troades).

Sitting by the conquering King Agamemnon’s tent, Queen Hecuba (markedly played by Angie Ferro) laments that in her old age, she will be taken as a slave to serve in the house of Odysseus. She had been a wife beyond reproach to the slain King Priam, had borne him strong sons and beautiful daughters, but because of war and the wrath of the inscrutable gods, she will die in a strange land, at the mercy of her people’s ruthless enemies, the wily Greeks who crossed the Aegean sea, not really because of the face that launched a thousand ships — Helen — but because of greed for the riches and strategic location of Prince Hector’s Kingdom of Ilion or Troy.

The old and doddering nanny Teresa finds herself in the same predicament — being disposed by the three children of the now dead daughter of her original mistress, after having served three generations of the family. It doesn’t matter now that she had selflessly relinquished all her chances of happiness for a family of her own, to faithfully serve what she thought would be the family she never had. What decimated her dream was not war of naked aggression, but a war nonetheless, between human compassion and covetousness. The children she loved, who are now based abroad — Stella (NY), Vince (Melbourne) and Andre (San Francisco) are torn between piety and pragmatism, as they bicker over the disposition of their parents’ properties, before they could saunter off to their separate lives with a fat bank account.

This film brings together two disciples of what the poet and scholar Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and written in the world” — literature: Direk Joey (as Jose Javier Reyes is fondly called in the industry), who is just a breath away from his Ph.D. in Literature and Tita Rustie (as her students and fellow thespians call Rustica Carpio), who finished her Ph.D. in Literature with an outstanding dissertation on the zarzuelas of Hermogenes Ilagan. Both pursued their degrees at the University of Sto. Tomas graduate school, and the values burnished in their careers are the same inscribed in the 400-year ethos of the university: Compassion, competence and commitment.

Once chairman of De La Salle’s Philippine Studies Department, direk Joey is teaching part-time again, while Tita Rustie has never left the academe, having served Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, Far Eastern University and Polytechnic University in various administrative and faculty capacities. The former is 63 and the latter is 83, but both agree that it is not enough to count the years one has lived, but how significant one has made them through passionate perfection of craft and credo. Direk Joey has chosen a theme to remind us of gratitude, and an actress who is the personification of grace.

Tita Rustie is all praises for her director. “Thoughtful, efficient, magaling magmaneho,” she alludes to him, who had a standing order to all his staff to guard her with their lives. Direk Joey is so proud of his lead actress, avowing that he respected her because she has combined the performing arts (stage and cinema) and the academe (teaching, writing and researching) with such dedication through the years. “Siya lang ang nasa isip ko when I wrote the script,” he confesses to the premiere night audience who trooped to the Megamall.

The director also brought to the fore the shining moments of Jackie Lou Blanco, Bobby Andrews and Ryan Agoncillo as the siblings nurtured by their “Ya,” as they fondly called Yaya Teresa. Their heated arguments are the nightmares of all parents, whose greatest heartbreak in life and death would be to see and hear their children at each other’s throats over their inheritance. Direk Joey, like Euripides, reflected his characters through the lens of psychology and sociology. The three children belonging to a pampered generation wrapped up in their own issues fail the old woman who spent her life indentured to them: Stella (Jackielou) bargains the lump sum to leave Teresa, Vince (Bobby) grills her about the relatives she can turn to after they sell their ancestral home, Andre (Ryan) accepts the box of faded photographs and keepsakes (the only bequeathal from their mother) without even asking why their mama did not even leave her a decent sum as boon for her 60 years of uninterrupted service, when she languished with cancer for a long time.

Direk Joey had a challenging task: To seamlessly advance a narrative spanning six decades through stream of consciousness flashbacks, carefully choosing actresses to render Teresa as she metamorphosed from a naive adolescent straight from the province, to a blooming lass who fell in love with Nato, to a wizened woman who took on the role of surrogate mother until her fragile old age. He knows when words cannot convey pain, disappointment, sorrow and betrayal as poignantly as the folding of hands, the twitching of lips, the turning of the back and shuffling of feet captured by relentless camera, underscored by melancholic violin music.

When the credits rolled, the theatre broke in thundering applause, having seen another excellent performance from Rustica Carpio, a despondent Hecuba standing at the smouldering ramparts of Troy and a despairing Teresa walking out the wrought iron gates of the 12th St. New Manila mansion. Tita Rustie has gripped our hearts with the timeless tragedy of women who are chattel to be mortgaged and divided as spoils of war, the real kind and the emotional variant.

Like Euripides, Joey stands by the conviction that these women will transcend their heartbreaks. While the queen would gnash her teeth and curse her fate, the nanny would pack all her moldy santos in her bag and armed only with her old umbrella and unfaltering faith, she would walk away from the ashes of perfidy, to face an uncertain future, but one that she would charter despite her destitution.

The leit motif of aging and the moral responsibility incumbent to address its complexities is the eye-opener of Ano ang Kulay ng Mga Nakalimutang Pangarap?. When the lights were turned on, I wiped a tear for the aging women of this world, especially those whose bitter pill is subservience that must be swallowed as noblesse oblige. Only grace and gratitude stands between them and the dark, dreary color of oblivion.