STARK LIVES, STARK LENS Restlessness and Realism in Brillante Mendoza’s Ma’ Rosa
As Rosa Reyes (Jaclyn Jose) surveys the world around her, little about it pleases the eye. Nor should it – she lives, poverty-stricken, in a shantytown in Mandaluyong, east of the Philippine capital of Manila, her surroundings proving a bleak yet busy ecosystem of hardship where aesthetics are the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. Her community is driven by practicality; surviving is their primary aim. Anything else is immaterial, even the promise of a different future that comes from an advertisement on the side of a bus that heralds, ‘It’s your lucky day.’
The irony provoked by the ad’s glossy message doesn’t escape attention in Brillante Mendoza’s Ma’ Rosa (2016) – standing out against the slums, the promotional slogan peddles insincere hope in a place where such throwaway dreams mean nothing. The juxtaposition is deployed naturalistically but purposefully by the director, particularly given the unsightliness that fills the frame. The director doesn’t just cast the lens over grime, grit and urban chaos, but also wields the camera as a tool to interrogate the hideousness seething beneath the feature’s realistic scenario.
Indeed, Ma’ Rosa
