“This is even worse than my trip to Tanganyika!”
Marcel Proust. Pere Lachaise cemetery., originally uploaded by Koosama.
– Joshua as he is washed ashore on Temptation Island.
The film director Joey Gosiengfiao died last Friday at age 66. Any retrospective of his films should include these masterworks.
Nympha. No man is safe from lust-crazed rich girl Nympha (Alma Moreno); her paraplegic father is reduced to hiring only ugly houseboys. Whenever she sees a guy she starts to shake and cough just like the old man in that book by Nabokov. Meanwhile her actress stepmother (Rosemarie Gil) is carrying on with her father’s assistant Albert (Ricky Belmonte). The two rendezvous at the Hyatt.
“Are you decent?” he calls from the door.
She emerges from the shower in a towel. “Do you mean my morals, or my outfit?’
“One never questions the morals of the rich,†he says.
“I’m so rich,†she cries, “But you make me feel so damn poor!â€
Pure Gorgonzola.
Bomba Star. Alma Moreno, Gosiengfiao’s muse, plays a barrio lass who wants to be a movie star, much to the distress of her seamstress mother Celia Rodriguez. Unknown to Alma, her mother had once been a promising starlet herself. The domestic conflict escalates until Celia is forced to chase a naked Alma across the rice paddies. Alma is discovered by photographer Ricky Belmonte, displeasing his actor-lover Eddie Gutierrez. Alma’s meteoric rise to stardom angers the reigning diva, Marissa Delgado, who plots to assassinate her at the movie premiere.
Temptation Island. During the evening gown competition of the Miss Manila Sunshine beauty pageant on a yacht on Manila Bay, the yacht catches fire and four of the beauties (Bambi Arambulo, Jennifer Cortez, Azenith Briones, Dina Bonnevie) are washed onto a desert island along with Cortez’s oppressed yaya (Deborah Sun), bitchy gay socialite Joshua (Jonas Sebastian) and his photographer boyfriend (Ricky Belmonte), a waiter (Domingo Sabado), and Dina’s stowaway suitor (Alfie Anido). Arguably Gosiengfiao’s masterpiece, the film has fantasy sequences involving electric fans and a giant fried chicken, insights on the class struggle (“Na-shipwreck ka lang, naging komunista ka na!” or words to that effect), an hommage to the Mexican film based on the real story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes, and a tearful sing-along of “Somewhere” from West Side Story.
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