The Mistress

       The quality of films in the Philippines, even completely disregarding the superficialities of cinematography, has a long way to go. If not full of amateurs, unfit-for-the-role veterans, or juvenile thespians, who sell not through their talent but through charm, movies are rife with clichés. Clichés, no matter how ironically debilitating of any or all interest, are relished time and again.

Many, perhaps, would readily jump to the conclusion that The Mistress will certainly not fail to copycat No Other Woman. I did; it was for this reason and the one mentioned above that I hesitated to watch it. After all, is it not just another take on adultery?

However, the psychological question that seems to have eluded the wide circle or intentionally so via mass media which has always puzzled me, although a theory as to such phenomenon looms at the back of my mind is: Why is The Mistress or No Other Woman or any other woman, for that matter, generally accepted by Filipino filmgoers?

There must be a deeper reason than simply the delight to see John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo (or Derek Ramsay, Anne Curtis, and Cristine Reyes in No Other Woman) pleasure each other, than inputs regarding relationships which the hoi polloi think they can appropriate, as if a valid theory-praxis paradigm, than entertainment.

I don’t have at my fingertips the statistics of cases on adultery or concubinage, but I am certain that it has not diminished and, perhaps, has now passed the borders of cliché and banality, without question on our part.

Yes, we are too afraid to ask, too afraid to know that we host the marital plague that gradually, if not rapidly, consumes the sacred bond that holds the society in place; for the two-dimensional desire to do it also haunts the very fiber of our being, and before us is a collective manifestation that admonishes attention. But neither feigning indifference nor condemnation will propel us forward to the sublime understanding of marriage, for this has been extensively done.

The Mistress wants you to open your eyes to this bitter fact of the present state of affairs. It does not judge you, no. It makes you judges of yourselves.