Jaclyn Jose is the heart of "Ma' Rosa"

Dante Mendoza's "Ma' Rosa" (2016, Philippines), a main competition entry in the recent Cannes film festival, may not be one of the best Filipino films of the year, but it's definitely one of the most important. Not only because of Jaclyn Jose's Cannes best actress-winning performance (we'll get back to this later), but also because it touches upon some of the social ills that plague our country: illegal drugs and police corruption. And in the film, it becomes apparent that the one problem can't do without the other: drugs becomes a milking-cow for the law enforcers and the former continues to perpetuate because the latter allows it to be so. There's really nothing revelatory in the idea, which says something about how grave the problem has already become. But what's disturbing is how complacent we have become in such a way as to treat such a problem as being a part already of our daily lives - a cultural phenomenon, that is. 

That's actually how the beleaguered family in the film confronts their situation. The couple Rosa and Nestor Reyes (Jaclyn Jose and Julio Diaz) may have shown some initial resistance and denial when the police (Mon Confiado, Baron Geisler, Neil Ryan Sese, Mark Anthony Fernandez) have arrested them for selling shabu, for which their small sari-sari store (located somewhere in a slum area in Mandaluyong) serves as a front. But that's about it. They are essentially powerless and defenseless in the face of the police's sinister demand to pay a bribe amounting to 200,000 pesos in exchange for their freedom and for their case to be finally swept under the rug, a case which is in fact non-bailable. It's at this point that the film becomes something of a pot-boiler, about which Troy Espiritu's screenplay is pretty on-the-nose. We see the husband and wife haggling all they can (or what seems like it, to no avail still) to be able to strike a compromise with the lawmen, as well as the couple's children (Felix Roco, Andi Eigenmann, Jomari Angeles) who suddenly find themselves bearing the cross on their shoulders as they become tasked with coughing up the remaining amount needed (with whatever means, like selling appliances, borrowing from vindictive relatives or coming along with gay patrons) for their parents' eventual release. The question of whether Rosa and Nestor will be released or not is prevalently hanging in the air during this period, maybe not as morally ambiguous as that asked by Hamlet but pivotal nonetheless. 

The vile and nasty things that the police can do is something which Mendoza likewise dealt with in "Kinatay" (which earned him the best director award at Cannes back in 2010). But unlike in that pitch-dark film (literally and figuratively), there seems to be some shreds of humanity left still in the police in "Ma' Rosa": they let the couple change their rain-soaked clothes, they allow them to join in their food and booze, they practically leave them physically unharmed. Otherwise, if they sense that they will simply get less or nothing out of their "bargain" with the couple, they could've just gotten rid of them for good, right (though God knows what they could've done with the others they arrested and detained for similar cases)? Though it's a proof of Mendoza's agile skill as a director that he's still able to maintain a nagging sense of menace behind the police officers' outward display of calm and demeanor, in that at any given moment they could still pounce on the hapless Rosa and Nestor (which they actually did on the couple's drug courier, which again says something about how such people are being kept under the wings of some higher-ups in the law enforcement hierarchy). And once more, the director's Dardennes-like fly-on-the-wall aesthetics (also used in the similarly slum-set "Tirador", back in 2009) drives home the immediacy and direness of the situation, astutely complemented by the nocturnal, rain-drenched viewpoint of Odyssey Flores' camera, which undoubtedly lifts a page from the film-noir handbook. 

Dating back to Ishmael Bernal's and Lino Brocka's quintessential films "Manila by Night" and "Maynila, sa Kuko ng Liwanag" respectively, there's always something both sinister and appealing in the affairs of the night, as if the milieu literally reflects the dark night of a character's soul. In "Ma' Rosa", the trappings of the night are tellingly contained in the drab police station, in which all the hagglings and sly deals related to the couple's drug case take place for the most part (in much the same way that the van serves to contain all the malignant forces of the night in "Kinatay"). The imposed claustrophobia could've easily made the film stagey and limited, but the astuteness of both Espiritu's screenplay and Mendoza's direction turns the setting into a virtual minefield, where every possible step is a make or break for the characters. One might even think if the setting is a legit station at all or if it's no different from a gangster hideout. (Rosa wonders earlier why they have to pass through such a place as they are being apprehended.) The police station, in this sense, becomes a micro-red tape institution. Again, nothing groundbreaking in the concept;what's unsettling is how we've become complacent with such. A fierce revolution that brings about a welcome change is still more preferable than a silent acquiesence that generates further misery. 

Which now brings us to Ms. Jose's award-winning portrayal of the title role at Cannes. We've yet to see, if ever, the much-lauded (if meatier) performances of Isabelle Huppert in "Elle", Sonia Braga in "Aquarius", Kristen Stewart in "Personal Shopper" and Sasha Lane in "American Honey" (by the way, this year's roster also included the lovely Juliette Binoche), but it isn't really hard to see why the jury (led by "Mad Max" creator George Miller) decided to award the best actress prize to Ms. Jose (the first-ever Filipino to win the prize in the prestigious film festival). I remember "Son of Saul" director László Nemes saying how her performance broke his heart and also seeing how the female jury members were teary-eyed when she accepted the award onstage. It wasn't a fluke. Ms. Jose's subdued acquiesence and resilience in the face of a compounding dilemma brought upon her family by the corrupt machinations of the police force  will quietly break your heart. It becomes even more heartbreaking when one realizes how she and her family are at the complete mercy of the bloodsuckers in uniform, how their impoverishment serves as no excuse for the devious machinery of the police system to not totally pounce on them, how much she can only let go in the end to have her fragile emotions crack through the veneer of composure (that well-noted fishball-eating close-up in the film's closing moments). A worthy epitome of the Brechtian Mother Courage, the actress simply becomes Ma' Rosa. It's even more telling to find out how Rosa may not be a totally likeable person, as hinted at during a scene where her daughter asks for financial help from a relative whom she despises (who, in turn, also despises her the most;that's why I don't understand why some critics say that they were not able to get into the "heart and mind" of Rosa). Which shouldn't really be an issue for us, for had the woman been depicted as a complete saint or martyr, it's doubtful if the humanistic core of her character could've achieved such depth. 

It's a role that was completely meant for Jaclyn Jose. Without her, "Ma' Rosa" just loses its heart. 

(Mother Courage: Jaclyn Jose in Dante Mendoza's "Ma' Rosa")