La Vida Rosa: So far the best this year

Everyday, we see different faces of criminals featured in the police report segments of both Saksi on GMA-7 and TV Patrol on ABS-CBN. However, I’ve always wondered how these people are really like away from their unlawful activities. Like how do they live, eat and breathe?

Unfortunately, in most local movies, the parts of criminals (even if they are playing protagonists) are always written in such a way that they often come out as dull cardboard characters.

In Star Cinema’s La Vida Rosa, we finally see hooligans in their everyday conditions – living, loving and hoping for a better life. Givng flesh to these hoodlum characters in the film are Diether Ocampo and Rosanna Roces.

Directed by Chito Roño, La Vida Rosa casts Roces and Ocampo as con artists who get involved in all sorts of criminal activities: kidnapping, carnapping, theft, etc. They actually operate under the supervision of an underworld boss, played by Vic Diaz.

When greed gets in the way of their illegal operations, they have a falling out with Diaz and, later, with his assistant, Pen Medina. Roces and Ocampo then begin to live in fear – with danger constantly lurking behind them.

La Vida Rosa doesn’t necessarily plead for sympathy and understanding for these unlawful elements in society. The movie merely depicts the every day lives of criminals the way it is in real life – minus the sinister laughter we often hear in most Tagalog movies.

In this film, we see hooligans also living ordinary lives – without necessarily spitting out bullets everyday for breakfast. And so we see Rosanna Roces here playing a doting mother to her son and a dutiful daughter to her own Mom, portrayed by Liza Lorena.

And what interesting role Liza Lorena plays here in La Vida Rosa. She is a blind woman who – to while away time – sits by the church door to ask for alms. At the end of the day, this supposed beggar – believe it or not – is fetched by a service car.

Liza is also made to age here way beyond her years. But despite the difficulty of the role and the fact that she had been away for so long, Liza goes through the old and blind woman part with much ease – proof that she’s still one of the country’s finest actresses. (I believe she was at her best in Oro, Plata, Mata and in Miguelito: Ang Batang Rebelde.)

Playing the bastard son of Rosanna Roces in the movie is Jiro Mano, one of the young talents in Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Muro-Ami. Once this movie is shown in commercial theaters, this kid – mark my word – will become the toast of Philippine cinema. He’s a brilliant child actor – even better than Lester Samonte who wowed local and foreign audiences (during film festivals abroad) with his excellent performance in Gil Portes’ Saranggola. He and Rosanna Roces have such great chemistry between them, you’ll end up relishing in your mind all their scenes together even long after the movie has ended.

Diether Ocampo, Rosanna’s partner in crime (and even in bed), had already shown marked improvement as an actor (he was so wooden in his early films) in Bakit Pa? and in Bukas na Lang Kita Mamahalin (both by Jose Javier Reyes). But here in La Vida Rosa, his performance is even a hundred times better.

And Rosanna Roces? I’m not saying this only because we work together in a television show. If you don’t believe me, see the movie yourself once it opens in downtown theaters within the next few weeks and I think you will agree with me that she had already ensconced herself as one of the best actresses in Philippine movies because of this film. Insome of her scenes, in fact, she reminds me of a young Rosa Rosal (one of the greatest we have) in the classic film, Anak-Dalita.

Actually, even in her old, sex films like Basa sa Dagat and Patikim ng Piña, Rosanna was already showing flashes of brilliance – which was quite a feat considering that those movies were, well, trashy and exploitative.

Fortunately, she had her chance to redeem herself as an actress in Ligaya ang Itawag Mo sa Akin and in Ang Lalake sa Buhay ni Selya under the guidance of Carlos Siguion Reyna. In fact, I thought that those two films would already be the pinnacles of her film career. I was wrong. Here in La Vida Rosa, she even gives an even more sterling (and far more colorful) performance compared to both Selya and Ligaya.

Her best scene in the film is the part where she confronts Pen Medina and, later, drops one of her delicious trademark Osang one-liners. If only for this scene, La Vida Rosa is already worth watching.

However, I assure you that each scene in this film is really worth your time and money. This movie may be dark and executed in film noir style, but is still highly appealing to viewers - thanks to the magnificent orchestration of the various cinematic elements under the baton of director Chito Roño.

La Vida Rosa has everything viewers are looking for in movie: drama, action, suspense, sex and even humor (provided mostly by Rosanna). All these elements put together, however, do not come out like tasteless and watered-down chopsuey. On the contrary, each one is brilliantly staged and meticulously executed. The film’s finale – done ala Bonnie & Clyde – shows the most inventive deaths (I’m not saying who died though) ever presented on the local screen. For a change, we don’t see a character gasping for breath and begging not to be brought anymore to the hospital. It is so diffrent from those usually syrupy Tagalog movie endings that are already starting to come out of our ears.

Actually, it had been quite sometime since we had a Filipino film of top quality shown in local theaters. La Vida Rosa is going to be the first in a long time. And in my book, it’s so far, also the best this year.