“Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last Na ‘To)" looks at the Filipino diaspora. Three children of Ina are now scattered abroad. Her eldest son Juan, played competently by Marvin Agustin, went to New Zealand to work.
“Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last Na ‘To)" from Star Cinema won the most awards in the latest Metro Manila Film Festival, which ends Friday. It garnered the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Scriptwriter, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress awards, among others, raising not a few eyebrows in the process. It is also one of the top three biggest earners at the box office.
The film is a timely comedy of manners and a funny social commentary of our chaotic country. In short, this movie is subversive. But we can only see the hilarious and marvelous magnitude of this work when we consider the three movies that make up the trilogy.
The first “Tanging Ina" was released in 2003 while the sequel, “Ang Tanging Ina Nyong Lahat" was released in 2008. The trilogy is the story of Ina Montecillo, played excellently by Ai-Ai de las Alas who certainly deserves to win the Best Actress award for her performance in the latest movie.
In the first film, Ina goes through a roller-coaster ride of a life because of the death of her first three husbands. At first she was rich because one of her husbands left her a bus company. But then the bus company got bankrupt when it was mismanaged by her third husband, who also died very early in their marriage. Ina was left to take care of her one dozen children from her three marriages. Her life was hard but because of her industry, her brood survived.
In the second film, in a bizarre but wonderful twist of fate, Ina became the president of the Republic of the Philippines. As a chambermaid in the presidential palace, she was the one who discovered the assassination plot against the president. When the president was killed, Ina became a celebrity as a state witness and found herself running for the presidency. She won, and so her big family invaded Malacañang Palace, making her “the mother of the nation."
This latest sequel started a few months after Ina left her post as the president of the Philippines. Ina is now a celebrity in her own right, having published her memoir and graced many ribbon-cutting ceremonies – from the launching of restaurants to the opening of funeral parlors and purified water stations. The family went back to live in their old house. Her long-time best friend, Rowena, played by equally excellent comedienne Eugene Domingo, still lives with them and now acts as Ina’s appointments secretary. Of course, Ina still enjoys the protection of the Presidential Security Group (PSG).
Parody of Philippine society
The trilogy is really a parody of our country.
The first installment was a sharp commentary about the acute state of unemployment in the Philippines: Ina walks the whole stretch of EDSA and passes by the statue of Our Lady of EDSA, looking for a job. After trying to sell pirated DVDs and being caught by the police, she ended up working as a performer together with transvestites in a seedy pub.
The second film tackles government corruption, which really starts in the hallowed halls of Malacañang. Of course in reality, a Malacañang housemaid like Ina will never become president. But since this is fiction, everything is possible in a funny way, highlighting the irony in the ugly reality that the top leadership in this country is often reserved for the scions of traditional politicians, hacienderos, and the compradors.
“Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last Na ‘To)" looks at the Filipino diaspora. Three children of Ina are now scattered abroad. Her eldest son Juan, played competently by Marvin Agustin, went to New Zealand to work. But then he gets victimized by illegal recruiters, so he goes home penniless. Since he is too ashamed to face his family, he continues pretending to be in New Zealand until Ina sees him wandering the streets of Metro Manila and brings him home.
In this latest incarnation of the successful franchise, Ina accidentally falls from the roof of a building and while in the hospital, the doctor discovers that she has cancer with barely a year to live. She cannot bear to tell her children the bad news, and in her remaining days, she tries to strengthen the relationships of her children who are now starting to fight over money and other trivial matters.
While Ina is supposed to be dying in the hospital, a new doctor discovers that she has no cancer and she is not going to die soon. The family is happy again. It is only fitting that Ina, the central character of this trilogy, will remain alive.
Made for Pinoy film fans
One thing I like about the “Tanging Ina" trilogy is that it was not made for foreign audiences, unlike many of the pretentious indie films that are designed to win awards, or at least get screened, in film festivals abroad. The trilogy is full of allusions to other Filipino movies, such that if you are not familiar with the melodramatic films of Sharon Cuneta and Vilma Santos, you will not understand the jokes in many scenes.
Senior and upcoming directors must take their cue from Deramas: Make movies and films for Filipino audiences and not for foreign film critics who will only romanticize poverty in the Philippines, or worse, portray Filipino culture as exotic.
As usual, Eugene Domingo is outstanding. There is no doubt that she is the best Pinay comedian in the country. She can make the audience roll on the floor laughing just with her wit. She is lovable and adorable.
The handsome and gorgeous Piolo Pascual made a surprise cameo appearance at the end of the film: He is the new PSG guy protecting Ina Montecillo, she who survived it all and deserves all these blessings.
I just hope that “Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last Na ‘To)" is really the last in the series. I don’t want to see this film, about the wonderful Filipino mother Ina Montecillo, go down the tiresome path followed by “Shake Rattle and Roll" and “Mano Po."
Filipino film goers should be thankful to the brilliant actors Ai-Ai de las Alas and Eugene Domingo, scriptwriter Mel del Rosario, and director Wenn Deramas for creating the crazy world of Ina Montecillo, which is really the real world that we inhabit in the Philippines.
The trilogy made us laugh. Hopefully, after our laughter, we would begin to think of how to save our “Inang Bayan," which, come to think of it, is really our “Tanging Inang Bayang Filipinas." – J.I.E. TEODORO, YA, GMANews.TV
J.I.E. TEODORO is an assistant professor of Filipino at Miriam College in Quezon City. He has won several Palanca awards for his works and a National Book Award for creative nonfiction from the Manila Critics Circle and the National Book Development Board. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from De La Salle University-Manila.
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