Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN -- MAMACITA!

Me and a couple of friends watched this movie last night. My friend, Poch, told me she heard it won for best foreign film. I was trying my hand at painting by numbers (a new-found novelty I discovered thanks to the movie Mona Lisa Smile {but that's another story}) when she popped in the DVD she bought online.
My eyes were on the paper, and the first sound I heard that signalled the start of the film was moaning. Yep, moaning. My eyes were suddenly riveted to the TV, of course.

Sufficeth to say, the film had very good direction, but the story leaves much to be desired. From an average Filipino viewer's perspective, it was just another one of those skin flicks we are bombarded with. I confess I am not a very good critic of film. The only thing I have under my belt is 1 semester of Film Class waaaay back second year college. But I still think the label 'coming-of-age movie' is not proper. The only aspect of their 'coming-of-age' that was tackled in the film was their sexual awakening.

Sue me for bad publicity, but that's what I thought. But then again, my background on their culture is pretty limited, so I guess the film could be realistic if I knew much more about it. But the film didn't even give us sufficient background into that. So all I had with me when I viewed the film was that the 'coming-of-age' label must have been used as it was supposedly applicable to people everywhere.

And I went through the sexual awakening stage. And it was NOT AT ALL as dramatic or traumatic as that. Was that the point of the movie, I ask myself now. I dunno really. Go watch it, but don't blame me if you stand up from your couch depressed at the end of it all, when you find that you are not better off after having sat through the whole ordeal.