Could Lav, Charo or JLC have been ‘it’?

A few minutes leading to the announcement of the winner for Best Film at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival (VIFF), Charo Santos-Concio cautioned her companions (director Lav Diaz, co-star John Lloyd Cruz and Charo’s BFF Baby K. Jimenez) to simply keep calm.

And the winner for Golden Lion Best Picture Award is…Lav Diaz for Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left), the official entry from the Philippines!!!

It was Charo herself who broke the “rule” and let out a big scream! John Lloyd broke into tears and, according to the Funfare insider-DPA, “He cried because he was very happy and but also because, sabi niya, he was very sad that while Lav is well-loved and well-respected in the world film community, back home hindi siya (Lav) appreciated. Shades of envy and professional jealousy?”

Earlier when the Best Actress winner, Emma Stone for the USA entry La La Land (with Charo among the Top 3 in the list of film critics’ “most likely winners” list), was announced, Charo was the paradigm of cool even if Variety chief UK film critic Guy Lodge was saying, “Golden Lion winners can’t win other prizes, so Emma Stone’s win is a mirage. Woman Who Left star Charo Santos is the real Oscar frontrunner,” adding in another tweet, “I’m on the ground here at Venice, so believe me when I tell you that Oscar buzz for Lav Diaz has gone through the roof in the last hour.”

That’s the rule: Only one award may be won by any of the 20 official entries. So, had Humayo not bagged the Best Film plum, could any of the three have been “it” — Lav for Best Director, Charo for Best Actress and John Lloyd for Best Actor? Who knows? (Two days before the awards night, however, Humayo was named Best Foreign Language Film by the 6th Smile Award Venice for “best enhancing the integration and social inclusion issues of marginalized people recognized as different or coming from disadvantaged socio-economic situations. The award was outside of the Main Competition.)

Humayo marks Charo’s movie comeback after many years, a colorful award-decorated career kicked off by the 1977 Mike de Leon classic Itim for which Charo won Best Actress at that year’s Asian Film Festival. Had Charo won, Humayo could have bookended her career which was rudely interrupted by her work as the big boss of ABS-CBN that gave her ample time only to shoot for her long-running, top-rated drama anthology Maalaala Mo Kaya?

Inspired by the Leo Tolstoy short story God Sees The Truth, But Waits, Humayo runs for less than four hours (in contrast to Lav’s other works that run for hours and hours, one of which for 24 hours!) and shot in only 12 days in Mindoro, Charo’s home province, a setting that seems to run parallel to Charo’s own life story. Humayo is about Horacia, a wrongly convicted schoolteacher who plots revenge against her ex-boyfriend (Michael de Mesa) who had framed her. After 30 years, Horacia is released from prison and roams the same town tracking the movement of her ex-boyfriend (now a wealthy underworld boss) with the help of an epileptic transgender (played by John Lloyd who himself earned praises from critics) and a balut vendor (Nonie Buencamino).

“When I did the movie,” said Charo who reported to the set a few months after she retired from ABS-CBN, “I didn’t imagine that it would come to this…to Venice no less!”

That Lav shot the movie in black and white enhanced its dramatic impact, saying as he accepted the Golden Lion, “I want to dedicate this film to the Filipino people and their struggle and humanity’s struggle,” and thanking the jury headed by director Sam Mendes who described the 20 entries as “a wonderful, astonishing variety.”

“Unlike in the case of the other entries,” revealed Funfare’s insider-DPA, “the jurors didn’t debate over nor deliberate about Humayo; the decision was unanimous, arrived at in only a few minutes.”

A discovery of Regal Matriarch Mother Lily Monteverde’s then much-maligned pito-pito system of filmmaking (that is, shot in seven days), along with Jeffrey Jeturian (Lav’s maiden film was Serafin Geronimo:Ang Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion starring Raymond Bagatsing), the first-ever Filipino Venice winner has actually created waves at the VIFF in 2008 when his film Melancholia won the Orizzonti Grand Prize (not in Main Competition). Last year at the Berlinale, Lav won a Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis for which he and his stars Piolo Pascual and John Lloyd walked the red carpet.

A word about John Lloyd: Although famous for being a rom-com actor, he has been doing out-of-the-box roles that confirmed his versatility as an actor, such as in Honor Thy Father (as the husband of a wife caught in a networking mess) and, yes, in Hele. In In My Life, the Vilma Santos starrer, John Lloyd plays a gay character who doesn’t have any qualms doing lip service with co-star Luis Manzano. No other young actor could be as daring!

Charo and Baby proceeded to Toronto (where Baby is now based) where Humayo will be shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and, on the side, will shoot an episode for Maalaala Mo Kaya? Lav took a side trip to New York before joining them (he should be in Toronto by now). Charo will be back on Sept. 19.

Meanwhile, Funfare learned that Pangasinan Congressman Christopher “Toff” de Venecia will file a resolution in Congress recognizing Lav’s victory in Venice, a big honor that might take years (knock on wood!) for a Filipino (Lav himself or an other artist) to duplicate.

The big question now is: Will Humayo’s next stop be at the Oscars (Best Foreign Language Film Category)?

More on that in another column.

(E-mail reactions at [email protected]. You may also send your questions to [email protected]. For more updates, photos and videos visit www.philstar.com/funfare or follow me on www.twitter/therealrickylo.)