Second chances Movie review Hintayan ng Langit
THE HOLLYWOOD film genre of the too-soon departed and basically decent soul, on a temporary reprieve to take care of unfinished business back on earth is a favorite since many of us pass on with an uncertain peace. Closely allied to this, is the deux ex mundi (not machina) variant where God or guardian angels (even Santa Claus) take on ordinary human form and mingle with mere mortals for the express purpose of helping out a deserving but clueless individual with a celestial fix that guarantees a miraculously happy ending.
Its latest local iteration is Hintayan ng Langit, an adaptation by Juan Miguel Severo of his awardwinning 45-minute one-act play with two characters, the former lovers: Lisang and Manolo.
Lisang is a potty-mouthed, prickly, snarky, snarly Gina Pareño whose many mild misbehaviors have caused her to remain stranded in the Hintayan — it is a welcome conceit that the waiting area for heaven is wonderfully, cheesily secular — where her punishment requires her to serve refreshments at support group meetings to help the newly deceased adjust to being dead. Eddie Garcia as a lumbering Manolo reprises his familiar “manay” shtick.
Pareño’s pacing is staccato while Garcia is adagio molto. Although they are former lovers who’ve supposedly kept the fires burning for decades, their continuous back and forth grows tiresome after the third repetition. There is a surprising lack of sexual frisson now that they share a room. Their respective, reliable spouses are only known to the audience as invisible, inaudible phone callers. Perhaps this is why the choices they make at the film’s end, have little emotional resonance. —