The Sinister Charm Of BABY TSINA

Baby Tsina

Marilou Diaz-Abaya's Baby Tsina (Viva Films) is a slumming trip through the lives of social derelicts who provide the forbidden delights of night life in late 60's Manila, but is also a richly-textured document yielding insights that seem so casually exposed by Diaz-Abaya's carefully selective camera. Other directors have ransacked the lives of the characters that people Baby Tsina. However, only Diaz-Abaya's unsentimental eye has succeeded in locating those lives against a physical and moral environment convincing the viewer that such lives were not the product of a scriptwriter's artifice but of social realities. Its cinematography, production design, musical direction and editing not only demonstrate a high level of technical competence but also reveal an artistic sensibility attuned to the demands of the director's material and intention. The technical sophistication so marked throughout the film is no doubt an extension of Diaz-Abaya's intellectual poise so palpable in the script and hauntingly articulated in finely-shaded performances the director has drawn from her cast. Baby (Vilma Santos), a prostitute intent on proving to herself that she could rise above her past, falls for Roy's (Phillip Salvador) promise of marriage. Baby looks forward to a new life with her lover in America, but finds herself thrust into a more sordid life in prison.

All the performances in Baby Tsina leave vivid portraits in the mind. Under Diaz-Abaya's direction, the actors and actresses do not seem to act, rather we seem to discover them as human beings whom the camera has espied. Vilma Santos projects a lusty but touching portrait of Baby, a victim who greedily looks forward to deliverance from the night-to-night struggle for customers, thrashing about wildly when her savior is killed initiating her into an even more debasing condition. Phillip Salvador weaves in and out of the story capturing the sinister charm of the grubby but good-looking creatures of Manila's underbelly. Dindo Fernando's Jorge engages our attention in a portrayal that is by turns comic, caustic and warm indicating an actor governed by intelligence and respect for the dignity of the character he is playing. As Baby's mother Nena, Caridad Sanchez radiates a tenseness that effectively projects her determination to keep her dignity against all odds. With Diaz-Abaya as the controlling intelligence behind Manolo Abaya's camera, Fiel Zabat's sharp eye for the authentic look and detail of the period, the shanties and apartments, the restaurants and the dives, the streets and the alleyways and the teeming crowds that come and go, these are familiar images in Philippine art and life that in Baby Tsina appear more real and feel more real.

Directed By: Marilou Diaz-Abaya
Screenplay: Ricardo Lee
Director Of Photography: Manolo R. Abaya
Musical Director: Willie Cruz
Film Editor: Ike Jarlego, Jr.
Production Design: Fiel Zabat
Produced By: Viva Films
Release Date: October 18, 1984