Babae sa Breakwater

I saw last night as the opening film of Cinemalaya 2012 the film Babae sa Breakwaterwritten and directed by Mario O'Hara about poor Filipinos living by Manila Bay. Although the film was released in 2003, it was only during the Cinemalaya screening as a  tribute to Mario O Hara that i first saw it completely.

     Babae sa Breakwater is a film about a man Basilio (Kristoffer King), who escapes from provincial Leyte to the slums of Manila with his younger brother Buboy (Alcris Galura). Residing in the shanty town tenements beneath the tourist-infested breakwater of Manila, Basilio falls in love with a prostitute named Paquita (Katherine Luna). Paquita started whoring so early in her life that at her relatively young age she's already played out, her body full of sexual diseases and open sores. Their relationship is troubled by the apparent poverty and the more impending threat of the slums' jealous protector, ex-cop Dave (Gardo Versoza). This tragic tale covers a whole plethora of emotions that surround Manila life

And it brought back memories of my childhood. We used to live in Ermita and the Roxas boulevard and the breakwater became my playground in the 70s. .During weekends , my family usually spend the whole day by a picnic along the breakwater near the US embassy. My parents and our yayas will bring a bayong containing our food. Believe it or not, we swim in the Manila Bay as i fondly remembered it as a very clean body of water. You can see the bottom and play with the aquatic species. We run along the wall, cross over the boulders, collect shells and stones.

Unfortunately, i guess those will just remain to be beautiful memories.  Successive changes in and around Manila Bay are largely due to the intertwining impacts of continued industrialization, unrelenting increase in population, and the incessant human activities catering to livelihood and habitation. These factors are directly degrading the overall environment of Manila Bay and these impacts are manifested in the continued deterioration of the water quality and sediments in the bay as well as impacted on the existing marine habitats.

  About two hours long, it is an Entertainment Warehouse production and was released in 2003. It stars Kristoffer King and Katherine Luna, who were nominated as Best Actor and Best Actress in the 2003 Gawad Urian Awards for their roles. Luna also won Best Actress in the Cinemanila International Film Festival for that year. While not commercially successful, the film was critically acclaimed and won several awards, including Best Picture in the 27th Gawad Urian and the 14th Young Critics’ Circle Awards. It was also appreciated by an international audience at the Cannes Film Festival 

As Manila bay was my natural swimming pool in my childhood days, i liked how the sea in this film was described by a blogger Oggs Cruz "The sea in O'Hara's film is the domicile of god; it provides as much as it takes away. Basilio and Buboy respect and appreciate its role. Despite the garbage and filth in Manila Bay, the brothers pay their respects to the unnamed deity by submerging their faces (supposedly conversing to their father --- murdered in the introductory religious vendetta). When humanity betrays Basilio (as when he gets pickpocketed or he is removed from work), it is the sea that magically provides.The film actually describes man's relationship with the sea (or in this case, God as represented by the sea). Manila, in the film's point of view, has raped the sea --- abused it and polluted it. The city itself is crowded with abusive people and dregs of society; children are addicted to rugby and will fight for leftover food; men urinate in the streets; the characters' pasts (both Paquita and Dave) showcase a depletion of morality within the citizenry, which continues to their present lives; another character steals to escape from the Breakwater but only succeeds in maintaining the habit. Basilio comes from a land where the sea is pure, and within the film, he maintains that purity and is able to reform Paquita, despite the temptations and the treachery of the city. O'Hara succeeds in driving that point, and fantastically, within the context of the tired genre of melodrama about the provincial who gets lost in the big city."

The September 2011  storm surge of  “Pedring” (international code name Nesat)  brought waves up to 20 feet high, and damaged the breakwater in Manila Bay as well as the seawall along Roxas Boulevard, spawning one of the worst floods about three feet deep along the thoroughfare.