Sa pusod ng dagat

It's a beautifully photographed film, resplendent with the wonders of nature and the shimmering shores of the islands. The story is simple, episodic, exquisitely told. Despite its length, it still engrosses.

However, some things did bother me. It didn't feel like the 1950s; somehow the atmosphere of that era was not captured. The costumes looked wrong (although I could be wrong), the manners and attitudes seemed to have come from the present. The sex scenes were mostly clinical (it seems hard to find Filipinas with no mustache these days for the kissing scenes). Hints of voodoo, adultery and needless deaths move the plot along, somewhat, but what annoyed me was the unconvincing scene where the main character, who's so enamoured of a teacher he followed to the city, managed to sleep with her after she had a fight with her husband (who left in an angry huff). It turns out she's still in love with her husband but wanted to be with someone that afternoon. So she sleeps with him. This is hard to swallow as I came from the same country and with the exception of prostitutes, I can't believe a married woman would do such a thing at the spur of the moment.

I still prefer Abaya's early efforts such as Brutal and Karnal, but this film looks like it had a bigger budget and worth watching if only for the cinematography.