‘Edna’ Review: Effectively brazen

Oggs Cruz

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‘Edna’ Review: Effectively brazen
It starts off like a typical OFW melodrama, but after secrets unfold, the film reveals its deeper layers

Edna, with acclaimed actor Ronnie Lazaro directing the feature length film, is an intriguing piece of work.  

On its own, it is a daring if not rickety experiment. It starts off like a typical OFW melodrama, with the titular heroine (convincingly played by Irma Adlawan), finally home with her family after several years of slaving away as a caregiver in a foreign land. It is only after some family secrets unfold that the film reveals its unsettling side. 

So if seen against the backdrop of all the other films that reverently tackle the OFW experience, it is one astounding anomaly, severely blunt but backed up with terrifying sense and logic. It does away with pleasantries and platitudes that are typical of the OFW subgenre, and instead goes straight to ask the question – is it all worth it?

 

Exaggerating the dysfunction

Edna is structured like a modern-day parable. Lally Bucoy’s screenplay is disarmingly simple, plotting Edna’s discovery of her family’s transgressions one at a time and in turn, mapping her eventual descent into madness with such incisiveness. 

The plotting’s simplicity however is matched by Lazaro’s brazen depiction of the downfall of Edna’s family. The characterization of Edna’s family teeters towards the implausible. From the suspiciously near-perfect reunion, ironically set during the joyous Christmas season, the family turns around a tad too suddenly without giving Edna the benefit of acclimating to the corruption.

Screengrab from YouTube

The film aptly resembles a caricature of the typical dysfunctional Filipino family. Each of the family’s members is characterized with such commonplace faults that have peppered films like Rory Quintos’ Anak (2000) or Wenn Deramas’ Ang Tanging Ina (2003) that tackle families turned wayward by an absentee parent. 

Edna subsists on the same conflicts, of having its suffering main character endure a cheating husband (Ronnie Lazaro), discipline a rebellious daughter (Mara Marasigan), swallow the failures of a lazy son (Nicco Manalo), and contend with abusive in-laws (Frances Ignacio and Sue Prado) and friends (Kiko Matos). Lazaro rightfully amplifies the situation and matches Edna’s impending insanity with her family’s absurdly depicted and gross self-entitlement. 

Meticulously directed

All that however has been done before. The OFW experience has been portrayed in film in various manners and perspectives. What Edna offers to the table is something overtly twisted. Where other films succeed in drawing out pity and compassion for the country’s hardworking overseas laborers, Lazaro’s film, uniquely fueled not by a need the sector’s need for consideration but by anger, is alarmingly brutal but on point. 

Screengrab from YouTube

It is a daring plan, one that Lazaro fulfills by doing away with needless subtlety and just pursuing a singular vision of portraying Edna’s madness without any hint of restraint. Lazaro innovates midway, switching to monochrome to recruit the gnawing despair and palpable violence of a classic noir into his tale of an OFW who has gone deranged because of her family’s inconsiderate ways.

It is a meticulously directed film, one that requires a certain commitment to its excesses for it to work. Lazaro, thankfully, is that unlikely first time filmmaker who possesses a level of commitment that signifies artistic maturity.  

He employs cinematographers Larry Manda and Arvin Viola to create an atmosphere of uncertainty within what essentially is a mundane provincial home. Francis de Veyra then adds aural inflections into the very clear-cut vision of what essentially is a typical household gone haywire. 

Step in the right direction 

Edna is a step in the right direction for the genre that seems to be endemic to the Philippines. Instead of luring Filipinos with the exotic locales that have been flocked to by Filipino workers like what has been done by films like Olivia Lamasan’s Milan (2004) or Rory Quintos’ Dubai (2005), the film looks inward, showcasing the mess that has become of the families that have been left motherless all in the name of money.

Its brashly put statement on the neglected sacrifices of the country’s OFWs actually outweighs its already hefty artistic merits. The film balances the self-congratulatory impulses of all the OFW films churned out by the country’s bigger studios with its resounding theme of caution in the midst of all the economic advances that have been provided by importing workforce. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema. Profile photo by Fatcat Studios

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