Imelda
Nunez is the nicest sweatshop owner ever. Her Marikina garment factory is small
enough for her to know all the employees, but industrious enough to have
international customers and supply chain issues. In some ways, she learned from
her father, Romeo Guevarra, who was a master shoemaker, but not such a hot
businessman. His unexpected suicide will come at a precarious time for her
factory, but it will lead to considerable soul searching in Milo Sogueco’s Mariquina (trailer here), which screens as
part of the 2015 edition of New Filipino Cinema at the Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts.
Yes, Imelda is the daughter of a shoemaker
and the namesake of the former First Lady, Imelda Marcos (who is still a political
force to be reckoned with). This irony will become a running gag in the film,
with a lookalike even professing her respect for Guevarra’s shoes. However, when
she looks back on her early childhood, Nunez realizes neither she, nor her
mother fully appreciated how much soul Guevarra put into his soles.
Frankly, for Nunez, this is a terrible
time for reflection. She has a quality control inspection coming up and a machine
on the fritz. Yet, as she searches for a traditional Marikina shoemaker to make
Guevarra’s final wingtips, she cannot help revisiting her formative years. They
were dramatic, especially when her mother left home, ultimately settling in
Hawaii. Through her omniscient flashbacks, we can see how the young Nunez misinterpreted
incidents to blame her devastated father and Tess, his business partner turned
live-in lover, rather than the mother who simply grew tired of Guevarra and a life
of shoes.
The list of potential shoe clichés is as
long as your arm (walk a mile in someone’s shoes, etc.), but Sogueco never gets
fatally caught up in any of them. Granted, Nunez is on a shoe quest, but it is
presented in rather practical terms. After all, they need shoes for his
funeral, since for some reason those that he was wearing that fateful night
have gone missing. While going through the process, Domeng, Guevarra’s last
real protégé, helps her get some perspective on her father.
Mylene Dizon is pretty much perfect as
Nunez. She can be both tough and vulnerable. We see in no uncertain terms how
tightly she has controlled her life, up until it is time to release the
floodgates. She also develops some appealing platonic chemistry with Dennis
Padilla as the older, more accepting Domeng. As Guevarra, Ricky Davao leaves no
heartstring unpulled, but it is indeed difficult to withstand the power of his
sad-eyed pathos. However, it is Bing Pimentel who will deliver the real
emotional body blow as the achingly dignified Tess.
Granted, there is no shortage of melodrama
in Mariquina, but Sogueco earns the unabashedly
sentimental climax, fair and square. The down-to-earth ensemble led by Dizon
looks at home in the Marikina workshops and showrooms, while being attractive
enough to have private lives worth getting worked up over. There are dozens of
points where it all could have gone off the rails, but the discipline of
Sogueco and Dizon keeps it all on the straight and narrow. Recommended for
those who appreciate tearful family dramas and popular Filipino cinema, Mariquina screens this Friday (6/12) and
Sunday (6/21), as part of New Filipino Cinema 2015 at the YBCA.
