Babae sa bubungang lata (1998)

Babae Sa Bubungang Lata (Woman On A Tin Roof, 1998) isn’t about films so much as it is about the people who make them. Not the film directors or producers or stars (as in Frederico Fellini’s 8 1/2 or Francois Truffaut’s Day For Night), but the little people on the marginal fringe. It’s based on a play written by Agapito Joaquin back in the 70’s, a little chamber drama about an actor Maldo (Mike Magat) and his faithless wife, Toying (Aya Medel). O’Hara, in adapting the play to screen, has updated all the cinematic references, and changed the actor to a stuntman. He added Amapola, an aging actress (Anita Linda); Nitoy, a billboard painter (Frank Rivera); his stuntman lover, Eric (Renzo Ruiz) and all kinds of subsidiary characters and their stories. The result looks less like a chamber play and more like Ishmael Bernal’s Manila By Night, like Robert Altman’s Nashville, or Short Cuts: people and their stories weave in and out of each other’s lives, crossing, opposing, loving each other.