A promising director and a sensible story

Very much in the news now is the controversy on whether or not the courts erred on sentencing to lethal injection Leo Echagaray. But no, I’m not tackling that here. I just thought it was so timely that we now have a new digital film called Mainit na Tubig that has a theme similar to the Echagaray case and other issues about rape/incest.

Written and directed by movie journalist/TV scriptwriter Ronald Carballo, Mainit na Tubig is the story of a widower (Phillip Salvador) who entrusts his daughter (Sofia Gwenn) under the care of his younger brother (Mike Lloren) when he does time in jail.

After many years, he is released from prison and takes his daughter to live with him. Father and daughter, however, have a difficult time adjusting to each other, especially since the child shows a rather strange behavior toward him.

Mainit na Tubig is Carballo’s debut film and it shows first-time jitters.

For instance, there are some portions in the film where he makes his characters verbalize the narrative instead of relying on cinematic images to tell his story. Perhaps in his next movie (when he gets the hang of moviemaking), he’d be more confident about using the language of cinema and use it to convey the film’s message to viewers.

And then, he has yet to master the art of when to say "Cut!" so that his characters don’t go on and on and on in particularly heavy scenes. Or maybe he could sit with his editor and be able to tell him when enough is enough.

But other than his tendency to be excessive with his scenes at times, Mainit na Tubig is already an impressive enough debut film and it is quite a relief to know that we have another talented director in Ronald Carballo. At least, he knows how to tell a sensible story – unlike a lot of other independent filmmakers today (especially those into digital) who can only compose images on screen, but do not have the slightest idea on how to put these together to make a coherent story on film.

Carballo’s strength as director, however, is his ability to handle his actors and bring out the best in them. In the case of his lead star Phillip Salvador, I guess the seasoned performer wasn’t really much of a challenge to Carballo because Phillip is one of the best actors ever produced by the local movie industry. Here in Mainit na Tubig, he is good – no, make that great – as always. His best scenes are those where he feels so awkward when his daughter starts manifesting unusual behavior.

But I salute Carballo for having been able to make newcomer Sofia Gwenn deliver one of this year’s finest performances. The young actress is motivated properly and she dishes out an acting job that could put to shame a lot of showbiz veterans when placed side by side with this newcomer in an acting contest. I give Carballo credit for that and I’m quite tempted to say that he may be his generation’s Lino Brocka, but I won’t because I have yet to see a follow-up project in order for us to determine his capacity as a film director. But so far, I’m impressed with his first job as a director and am eagerly looking forward to his succeeding directorial projects.