Staff Picks: ‘Pangarap ng Puso’

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AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, Filipino auteur and master filmmaker Mario O’Hara made Pangarap ng Puso, a production with the bones of a studio film but the heart of an artist with much on their mind. Alternatively titled Bulong ng Demonyo (the film’s English title is, simply, Demons), the film posed as a star vehicle for its lead, Matet De Leon, who, at the time, was being shepherded on the same path as her adoptive mother and bona fide movie star, Nora Aunor. The film’s genre-bending literary romance, its strong principal and ancillary cast, and O’Hara’s newfound liberation from old filmmaking techniques cohere into a one-of-a-kind, magical realist story about a country unable to exorcise its demons.

I wasn’t sure which film to recommend following the last pick, Erik Matti’s Pa-Siyam (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre). I figured people’s disposition for all things grave and darkly hadn’t yet waned from Halloween, so I picked out this largely overlooked Regal Films gem that cloaked (or tried to, anyway) under its populist premise of young love a harrowing look at the horrid things happening around us and ones stirring from within.