Pamilya Ordinaryo: Street tough
ACCORDING to one reliable estimate, 21,000 homeless children live in the streets of Metro Manila. They sleep in parks, under bridges, on sidewalks.
Some beg, some steal, some sell their bodies in a day-to-day struggle for survival. They are, we are constantly reminded by government officials, a festering urban problem.
In "Pamilya Ordinaryo" Director/Writer Eduardo W. Roy Jr. gives that problem a face. Two faces, in fact. Meet Aries and Jane Ordinaryo, teenage street dwellers who are the parents of the infant, Arjan.
The film, which won five awards at this year's Cinemalaya, including best full length feature, best director and best actress, is a powerful yet poignant portrayal of youths pushed into a desperate situation and how they confront it despite overwhelming odds.
Their woes begin when a gay loan shark runs away with Arjan after loaning Jane money to buy diapers at a grocery store. A distraught Jane phones Aries and he is furious. When he calms down, they begin asking people if they saw a gay man with a baby. No one did.
Jane reports the kidnapping to the police. At the police station, the interrogating officers intimidate her into baring her breasts before agreeing to look for her missing baby.
At a radio station, Aries and Jane air an appeal for information on Arjan's whereabouts. The broadcast executives go one step further and make a TV dramatization of the couple's plight.
Finally, a breakthrough: Someone texts Jane, saying she is the mother of the gay man who took her baby and that she knows where he was hiding Arjan.
A meeting is arranged, and the supposed mother tells Aries and Jane that she can get back their baby. There is a catch: She needs P10,000 for transportation and expenses.
To raise the amount, the couple turn to a tried-and-tested practice: snatching cellphones. Aries however gets caught by barangay tanods and would have been badly beaten if he had not escaped. Jane has better luck, easily grabbing a pedestrian's handbag.
Aries makes up for his faux pax when he is picked upby a motorist who is cruising for some instant gratification.
They manage to put up only P5,000, but the gay's supposed mother says it will do. Only when she has left did it dawn on Jane and Aries that they've been conned.
As their hopes of recovering Arjan shrink, they get another text message, this time saying that their baby had been sold to a couple living in an upscale subdivision.
Aries scales a fence to get into the posh village and locates the address mentioned in the text. He sneaks into house and finds a baby in a crib.
But he is not sure if the baby is Arjan. The only way to confirm is to bundle up the infant and bring it to Jane, who is waiting outside the fence.
Will Aries make it out of the house unseen? Is the baby he is carrying really Arjan?
"Pamilya Ordinaryo" draws its dynamism from Roy's brilliant screenplay and directorial skill. The dialogue is sharp-edged; the characters curse and shout, but do not spout hugot lines. There are no wasted or drawn-out scenes and the pace is fast and crisp.
Newcomer Hasmine Killip delivers a searing performance as Jane and is justly rewarded for it with the best actress award. Ronwaldo Martin as the street-tough, rugby-sniffing Aries shows remarkable versatilityfor a young actor. The role is a radical shift from the mild-mannered high school student he portrayed in "Ari: My Life with a King."
Like "Ma' Rosa", "Pamilya Ordinaryo" explores the dark and seamy side of the city and seeks out the wretched souls that inhabit it.