Business lessons from ‘Mano Po 2,’ ‘Filipinas’ and ‘Bridal Shower’
December 29, 2003 | 12:00am
Can the Philippine movie industry (with luminaries such as Dolphy, FPJ, Erap, Mother Lily and Sharon Cuneta) someday help spark a cultural revolution that would set the whole Philippine archipelago afire with economic, social, cultural and moral reforms instead of just being the breeding ground for senators, mayors or political leaders? What should be the role of the industry in building a better economic future for the Philippines? When will the government undertake measures to save the industry from financial ruin and obsolescence – such as cutting down the grossly exorbitant taxes and by providing financial aid for high-quality film projects that could be exported worldwide?
There is indeed no business like show business, especially its huge untapped potential for propagating ideas and values that could subvert the semi-feudal socio-economic/political and Spanish-influenced Philippine society. Our movie industry is still alive and kicking, despite our moribund economy, as well as the non-stop exploitation by politicians who use showbiz for electoral campaigns but milk local films via high taxes. The industry is still alive, despite director Jose Javier Reyes’ pronouncement in the Asian Wall Street Journal that the Philippine movie industry is a "cancer patient."
Three entries for the 2003 Metro Manila Film Festival premiered recently (Mano Po 2: My Home, Filipinas and Bridal Shower). Here are our reviews of these films using a business and economic point of view.
First Life president Peter G. Coyiuto reportedly paid several million pesos to add this portion to the script, hoping to help propagate the gospel of life insurance as a means of saving and obtaining financial help. A graduate of Wharton Business School and La Salle, Coyiuto laments that the Philippines has one of Asia’s lowest national savings rates, which includes very low life insurance coverage nationwide. He adds that a high national savings rate is required to build up domestic capital needed to fund Philippine economic development.
Since this is a two-hour movie focusing on the immigrant taipan’s three squabbling wives, it is unfortunate that not much is shown about his early years of blood, sweat and toil.
Did Antonio encounter failures similar to the two bankruptcies of the young Lucio Tan? Did Antonio experience the same searing tragedy as John Gokongwei Jr. whose father died young and whose family home in Cebu was foreclosed by creditors? Did Antonio suffer experiences similar to the young Gokongwei’s rejection by a top Chinese-owned bank in his first loan application, but only to be later accommodated by China Bank under Dee K. Chiong and Albino SyCip? Did Antonio endure the same hardships as Henry Sy, whose father became bankrupt due to the burning of a sari-sari store and the looting of another store in Quiapo during World War II?
Antonio is good in business but causes the near-collapse of his clan because he fails on three things: in managing his three wives, in managing his kids, and in preparing for succession in case of his death. His only wise decision is to protect his estate and heirs by purchasing a P200 million policy from First Life.
Sol, Antonio’s first wife, is a Filipina played exceedingly well by Susan Roces and Kris Aquino (as the young Sol). Equally great performances from Zsa Zsa Padilla as the long-suffering second wife Lu Shui (a Chinese), and Lorna Tolentino as the mistress (a Chinese-Filipina mestiza), a savvy businesswoman named Belinda. The scheming and ambitious Belinda is not depicted as the traditional all-evil villain, for she helps her late husband attain success. Rather, she is portrayed as someone fighting for her rights.
Other stars in the cast are: Judy Ann Santos (the sister who disrupts the harmony by giving her corporate shares to her martyr mother, the first wife); Carmina Villarroel who is married to Jay Manalo (a modern-day westernized Chinoy, a spoiled brat who plays golf and silently schemes to steal the family business without honest hard work); Cogie Domingo (the distraught eldest son who grew up fatherless); Richard Gutierrez (the whining spoiled brat son of Belinda who lacks the character of his immigrant Chinese dad); Alessandra de Rossi (another disobedient brat); Karylle (the filial daughter), plus Zoren Legaspi, Chynna Ortaleza and Angel Locsin.
Mano Po 2: My Home is a well-made film epic by director Eric Matti, based on the screenplay of award-winning writer Roy Iglesias with story contributed by executive producer Mother Lily Monteverde, who reveals that the tale of the taipan with three wives was loosely based on the life of her late father-in-law, the patriarch of the prominent Dy-Monteverde Chinese business clan. However, she refuses to reveal which parts of the movie are based on fact and which are pure fiction.
It tells the wacky love and sex lives of three female friends working for an advertising agency: the sensuous Dina Bonnevie as an aggressive and wild executive; Cherrie Pie Picache as an overweight, kind-hearted and lovelorn woman; and the voluptuous bold starlet Francine Prieto as the woman who confuses lust with love.
Francine’s character is torn between her true love for Douglas Robinson, the financially struggling jologs painter, and her other suitor Juancho Valentino, a rich mama’s boy with fancy cars. When Francine gets pregnant and is unsure who between her two lovers is the dad, her gold-digger mom played by Gina Pareño nags her to choose the Ayala Alabang kid. Francine ends up as a young matron who wastes her idle time on shopping and gossiping. An encounter between the lower middle-class social-climbing Chabacano-speaking mother (Gina Pareño) conversing in pidgin Spanish with the haughty Spanish-mestiza cacique mother of the groom (Boots Anson Roa) is one of the film’s funniest moments.
Dina Bonnevie’s character is a highly paid, fast-rising and assertive executive hoping to marry her boyfriend Christian Vasquez, an unsuccessful car salesman. Dina not only pays for Christian’s annulment from his wife, she even pays for the P50,000 bribe to hasten the process. When the boyfriend can’t commit to marriage and asks for a cool-off, Dina throws away her successful career and corporate promotion by attempting suicide but ends up accidentally killing her beloved dog!
This widespread phenomenon of failed sales people in Philippine society is again shown in Cherrie Pie Picache’s young macho dancer boyfriend played by Alfred Vargas, whom she urges to switch professions by going into life insurance.
Christian and Alfred are bumbling failures in selling cars and life insurance, but are great lovers – still bad for the Philippine economy! Both of them should never give up and should seek non-stop sales training in order to stop their financial dependence on their girlfriends! Many local salespeople do not view their work as a great profession, do not develop the character to withstand the rigors of sales as well as the constant rejections, and often fail in after-sales customer service.
The movie reflects the tragedy of many families, with enterprising Filipinas subsidizing idle or unsuccessful guys. Dina spends for the needs of Christian while Cherrie Pie goes to an Indian loan shark for the P50,000 cash her boyfriend Alfred desperately needs to borrow! Women should not tolerate their boyfriends becoming spoiled bums!
In the recent blockbuster movie Tanging Ina, the mother (played by Ai Ai de las Alas) is perennially struggling to support her 12 kids! In Mano Po 2, the taipan has six kids from three women, but this is a small number compared to the macho dancer’s eight siblings in Bridal Shower, Ai Ai’s 12 kids, and Armida Siguion Reyna’s seven kids in Filipinas.
Will these movies help impart the fact that responsible parenthood is ideal not only for the mother’s physical health but also crucial for a family’s economic well-being and financial security? When will our political leaders raise the issue of responsible parenthood into a national priority policy for economic progress and social justice? Are the Catholic bishops, who oppose contraceptives, doing their share to promote responsible parenthood through the rhythm method and proper health education using their vast network of parishes in poor communities nationwide?
We disagree with the common depiction of radical labor union leaders in Filipino movies as all-good saints or heroes, such as in the award-winning box-office flop Sister Stella L. Victor Neri is convincing as the leftist labor union leader who eventually goes underground after the government accuses him of blowing up a factory. He is a misguided idealist and a menace to Philippine free enterprise, but he is an honest labor leader (unlike some of his peers here and even in America who receive huge bribes). When will a major Filipino film present the other side of the truth – how the radical Left impoverishes the country by scaring away domestic and foreign investments from our economy by mixing legitimate labor issues with illogical socialist political sloganeering?
Ironically, ideologically socialist and leftist governments in China and Vietnam do not allow strikes by radical labor unions, leveraging their decisive no-strike labor policy as one of the irresistible attractions for the massive inflow of foreign investments into their booming economies.
Armida’s second child Richard Gomez is her favorite. He fails financially after losing his white-collar computer job in California and is forced to return home because he can’t afford to raise his kids in America. How many untold tales of overseas Filipinos becoming failures or endlessly struggling in the fabled land of milk and honey, but who continue to send hard-earned dollars to feed their unemployed relatives in our republic who think their balikbayan relatives are mining gold?
Third child Dawn Zulueta is a caregiver working in Israel who survives a terrorist bombing which kills her friend. The government refuses to aid her friend’s family because a bureaucrat says she is unlisted as an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) mainly due to her illegal labor recruiter. Dawn’s husband, played by Richard Quan, dreams of migrating to the US and is a jobless bum, while their daughter grows up a stranger to her OFW mom. In the end, Dawn stays home to care for her comatose mom Armida, and her once bum husband finally changes heart and finds work as an OFW in Libya.
May this aspect of Filipinas shame our many corrupt and inept political leaders, for their failure to solve the massive problem of about 12 million people jobless or underemployed today, which is the reason why 2,700 Filipinos leave our republic daily to work overseas, according to the Department of Labor and Employment. The politicians even have the nerve to hide the unemployment failure, by claiming to be the champions of OFWs!
Fourth child Aiko Melendez is a self-centered entrepreneur. She weds an Indian businessman played by Raymond Bagatsing. Aiko can’t stop the steady decline of the Filipinas family’s onion business, due to the government’s failure to stop the flood of cheaper onion imports. Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry director Henry Lim Bon Liong says that import restrictions can be adjusted according to the supply situation of Philippine onions, rice and other agricultural products, but we should not allow total opening of the country to the deluge of cheap imports and smuggling of agricultural products which may financially ruin our poor farmers, bankrupt small traders like the Filipinas family and further impoverish our rural regions.
The government should protect the country’s 12 million farmers in our rural regions as a priority national policy, similar to the Bush government’s protectionist policy for its agricultural sector, as well as similar policies by Japan, China and Europe to help their farmers. Idiotic political leaders who have no wisdom or true patriotism had years ago signed the death warrant for the country’s industries and agriculture by making the Philippines one of the earliest members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), succumbing to Western pressures for the fast-paced opening up of the Philippine economy to globalization.
Why didn’t they learn from the nationalistic and no less business-minded leaders of Malaysia or China, who only agreed to open up their economies to globalization but in stages and according to their own terms?
The youngest child played by Wendell Ramos is a soldier fighting rebels in Mindanao, and he is a Trillanes-like reformist who files a formal complaint on military corruption. Though his superiors fail to act on his complaint, Wendell has no chance to be persuaded to join a military coup because he is killed, possibly liquidated by fellow military officers to shut him up. How many other similar cases are there in the Philippine military?
Will Filipinas’ tale of the killed idealistic soldier complaining about corruption awaken the apathetic public on the decades of non-stop systemic corruption in government, the judiciary, national police and military organizations? Civil Service Commission Chairman Karina David estimates that the Philippine government lost $48 billion or P2.6 trillion to corruption over the past 20 years! How many tens of thousands of public schools, provincial roads and hospitals could have been built, how many millions of textbooks and medicines could have been bought by the money stolen by our political leaders in the past two decades of corruption which has impoverished the Philippines despite our abundance of skilled labor, our amazing wealth of natural resources and vast arable lands?
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