One of the most pleasant experiences I miss from teaching Filipino at Xavier School is surprising my upper class Chinese-Filipino students that creativity and depth are alive and well in the Philippine entertainment industry. And if I were still a Filipino teacher today, I would have one more film to add to my list of contemporary movies worth teaching. Along with Magnifico, La Visa Loca, and Ploning, I’d make room in the curriculum for Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay.
Jose Javier Reyes wrote an interesting article on the monotony of television shows nowadays. Reyes comments that what we watch on TV every night is more and more of the same. Whatever the channel, someone is bound to have amnesia, get kidnapped or if I may add, be killed by high-powered explosives. Reyes opines, “Today’s telenovelas are meant to cater to public taste and temperament — and this is measured not by greatness in creativity but what is most tasty, palatable or assumed accessible to the intelligence of the audience.” This idea is not lost on the youth of today. Before, whenever I’d inform my students that they were required to watch a Filipino film, the announcement elicited groans of hesitation, sensing they were about to watch another over-the-top, melodramatic Filipino movie. This impression had been solidified during their growing-up years when they were forced to watch drama as a consequence of being with their yaya.
Lilia Cuntapay is the unfamiliar name of a famous face in showbiz. She is the actress who always plays the aswang in horror films. This time around, she is the main subject of a fictitious documentary about her life as a bit player.
Indie films are best known for their nitty-gritty portrayal of poverty. Six Degrees…, however, tackles another dimension of poverty, one often overlooked and de-emphasized in favor of shocking scenes of starvation and unimaginable living. The film delves into the psyche of the poor -- their dreams, their values, and their aspirations in life.
The film walks us through the life of an extra. Far from what we expect, Lilia portrays in the film how bit players like her strive to be professional actors while making commentaries against artists and directors who make other people wait for their arrival only to cause the entire crew to pack up once they get upset. Although she only has an average of three to five lines per film, she practices these with gusto, all the while enduring the long wait for her scene and the discrimination and lack of respect coming from people who do not value her job as an extra. To these lofty but unprofessional people, Lilia has four words: “Pakamatay na lang sila.”
The rest of the film relies on Lilia’s wit and humor, the best of which deal with the things we easily take for granted. But as expected, not everyday is sunny in Lilia’s life and there are heartbreaking scenes in the movie where viewers watch first-hand the experience of rejection and marginalization due to one’s status in society. One of these was when her interview was deleted from a TV Patrol segment, this after inviting all her neighbors to her house for her much-awaited five seconds of fame. In the end, even that was deprived of her. The movie resolves her personal journey by making her realize that though she may never be recognized by her peers for her significance in showbiz, what gives meaning to her life are her friends and family who stood by her, through thick or thin, project or no project. She does get her moment on the stage, thanks to the generosity of another actress, and her final message to the viewers is, “Ako si Lilia Cuntapay,” a declaration that everyone has a story yearning to be told, and it is the smallest people who have the greatest to share.
Although fictional or, at most, inspired by her life, Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay proves the star value of a lead actress is secondary only to the creativity and depth of the script. It is these kinds of films that will convince the most jaded youth that Filipinos can create movies that are more than the usual. Better yet, it is these kinds of films that will open their eyes to the real stories that matter; those that involve heartbreaks and sacrifices just to prove one’s worth in society. It is these lives, devoid of glitz and glamour, that reveal what are most essential to a human being — dignity, recognition, honor, acceptance, and love. These are the stories that deserve telling and these are the films that can be entertaining and enlightening at the same time.