Bona. 1980. Directed by Lino Brocka.

(12/24/00)

Bona reminds me of Italian neo-realism with its emphasis on describing poverty and on very real, ordinary, believable human situations. I think, though, that time has given the classic Italian neo-realist films a kind of lustre which sort of distances them. Bona hadthe kind of immediacy, the feeling of watching "real life" that I suppose the neo-realist films had in the 40s.

I was thinking of saying that this film had an "amateurish" quality, but I think that a more appropriate word would be "rough." It has a rough, unvarnished look about it.

Bona is a teenage girl, a young adult, who has an unhappy home life and develops an attachment to an extra or bit player in films. She moves in with him. She loves him but he regards her as a servant. He brings other women home and expects her to serve them. Her father appears, they fight and he has an attack and is taken to the hospital. He later dies and Bona's mother sends for her to come to the wake where her brother throws her out. The actor, Gardo, informs her that he is leaving with another woman. He advises her to go home, but she can't. The film ends when Bona scalds him with a pot of boiling water.

The performers are believable to a fault, but Nora Aunor steals the show as Bona. Her name is the title of the film and we feel for her. She is uncooperative in her home where her parents (her father, especially) yell at her, but willingly works to serve Gardo--so we see that she isn't lazy. She comes across as meek and passive and in that final scene the repressed anger erupts.

Philip Salvador is also quite fine as Gardo--frequently strutting around in his brightly colored briefs. He is self-centered, but we see things from his point of view, too. He gives Bona a home and anescape from her family. He never leads herto think that they are a couple or romantically involved. So he isn't doing anything to her by having affairs with other women. While we feel her pain it isn't like Gardo is deliberately exploiting her. (That's how I see it, anyway.) It is just the kind of situation that people get into.

Gardo is certainly insensitive. He shows no concern for Bona at all at the end and even hits her up for the money to pay for the abortion of a girl he's knocked up.

The climax where Bona scalds him with the water is masterfully edited. You can really feel the tension building. Then the film ends so suddenly, right at the moment of climax and with no falling action. We are left wondering, "And what happened then?" It is sudden and abrupt--which is part of what I mean when I say that the film has a "rough" feel to it.

This film is interesting for its scenes of making movies in the Philippines. It deals with the familiar subject of hero-worshipping a celebrity who turns out to be not very much as a human being. In that respect it is a kind of darker version of Fellini's The White Sheik.

There is also one very sensuous scene where Gardo can't sleep and asks Bona to massage him. She massages him with oil and it becomes very obvious that they are going to make love. (Brocka doesn't show us that, however.)

Bona begins very strangely with shots of masses of people at a parade or religious procession. I would like to know more of what that was all about. And I would like to see other films by and know more about Lino Brocka.


(12/28/00)

A futher note about Bona:

Bona seems pretty bleak at the end insofar as the protagonist's prospects are concerned. But there is one note of hope. Earlier in the film Bona had told one ofGardo's lovers that "if you get along with people you don't starve." People help one another in that milieu and Bona does have her amiability to fall back on.