The education of a sexagenarian

Film review: Old Skool

MANILA, Philippines - Cia Hermosa-Jorge’s Old Skool that premiered last week unravels like a well-loved family scrapbook focusing on a 69-year-old grandma trying to find a life after the death of a dear husband.

It takes a very short while to warm up and find the heart of this film full of poignant chapters in a solitary, if, lonely life of a widow. But she quickly finds her bearing and turns to her unfinished grade school studies as her final goal. Coping with high blood and mild stroke, she achieves her goal and finishes at the top of her class.

Finally, here is a film that both grandparents and grandchildren can relate to with ease. The film is a good delineation of the old and young generation while it tries to salvage the good old values that already looked anachronistic in cyber age.

By and large, the film is a good advertisement on the value of education, especially to the senior citizens trapped by early parenthood.

It is a film that should teach young people how to treat late bloomers in school.

Indeed, the film has many things going for it.

Tessie Tomas in the lead role turns in a very marked, if, well-nuanced performance as Tia Fely. The director spent a lot of frames visualizing her lonely moments and it is just as well to show what solitary women like her go through.

Moreover, she has a very touching cemetery scene and as days turn into weeks and months, it is obvious she needs something to keep her busy.

Tessie with Angel Aquino (right), who provides the film with good character contrast

As her only daughter (Angel Aquino) leaves for another work assignment, she has to cope with bouts of boredom and later, utter restlessness ensues.

When she comes across a medal of her unfinished grade school days and decides, she will go back to school.

But it won’t be that easy as she thought.

In school, she gets derisions right and left and more so from the school bully played marvelously by Buboy Villar. His transition from bully to well-mannered adopted grandson provides the film with its whacky, unruly and later, some poignant moments indeed.

This could be Buboy’s best role so far and one won’t be surprised if he gets an acting award in this film.

Providing sharp contrast to the mother’s loneliness is the aggressive, if, driven daughter played with intensity by Angel.

Again, the transition of the character of Angel from the driven (single?) mother to a more caring daughter gives the film some of its pivotal character contrasts.

Made on an indie film budget, Old Skool has a lot of mainstream appeal from the musical scoring of Nonong Buencamino to its spontaneous storytelling.

On the whole, it is a film that an entire family can enjoy. It lives up to the general-patronage rating without sacrificing crucial scenes in the movie.

It has loving echoes of Lino Brocka’s Inay but the comparison ends there.

The present time and setting make Old Skool an engrossing film about sexagenarians trying to cope with the new age.

On the other hand, one likes the special sensitivity of the director, Cia Hermosa-Jorge, who managed to give us a moving story without concocting melodramatic situations to appeal to the emotions of its viewers

It is obvious she loves the story, she was visibly inspired by the subject and with limited budget, and she was able to wrap up a project that can appeal to both the young and old.

Like it or not, Old Skool lives up to the standard of the director’s mentor, the late Marilou Diaz-Abaya.

You leave the theater energized that yes, the twilight season of senior citizens need not be a winter of discontent.

Old Skool opens in all SM cinemas on Nov. 4.