"Madaling mambola, mahirap magdasal."

I've started to become interested in watching more Filipino movies lately, mostly because I'm starting to become tired of all the typical Hollywood cliches and storylines. Unfortunately, it's not just Hollywood with the same cliches and storylines. All the Filipino romantic comedies/dramas? Predictable. Even though they're uber-cheesy, I still watch them. I like it though, mostly because the actors are completely foreign (no pun intended) to me. Plus I'd rather watch the movies without English sub-titles. Completely distracting to me.

I can't say my access to movies in Tagalog or other dialects are readily available. I don't have The Filipino Channel, ABS-CBN, or GMA. The filipino store (more like shack...) in the area has a crappy selection for rent. It's not like I live in San Diego or any other big city in CA where there are tons of Filipino stores, bigger than my living room. So what do I resort to? Youtube. Sad, eh? Come to think of it, I guess there's always Netflix too. I just haven't added any Filipino movies to my list there.

Anyway, back to the quote I'm using as my title for this post. It comes from from the movie Santa Santita, which I came across on Youtube. It's broken up into 10-minute segments on there, which is fine for me because my attention span is....bleh and I'm really busy. I'm only about 3/4 of the way through the movie, but I highly suggest it. Even Variety gave it a great review two years ago. It deals with coming of age and faith, perfectly portraying the fatalist society in the Philippines. I don't really like watching religious movies, but this one was different. You've got elements of Catholicism, luck, people who are willing to pay faith healers to answer they're prayers because they feel the faith healers have a closer connection to Christ. All the while, you've got a rebellious/promiscuous daughter of one of the faith healers (who reminds me of a chubby filipino Elisha Cuthbert for some reason....!?!?). She gets tempted by one of the local hustlers. She who'd rather not have anything to do with faith, but she gets thrown into faith healing when her mother dies. Her own feelings towards faith and prayer are uncertain, but when people start coming to her for healing because she's the daughter of a faith healer and they believe in her, those feelings start to become more clear as she starts to embrace her role and faith. It's got elements of the stories of Adam & Eve and Mary Magdalene, maybe even the prodigal son. I'm not going to go more in detail regarding plot summary, as thats what the internet is for. Be resourceful and look it up yourself.

LAtely, I've become more of a "sometimes Catholic." Doesn't that sound horrible? There was one scene where all the faithfuls come to Malen's home for healing and Malen is talking with one of the nuns. The conversation was short, but it was a turning point for Malen. You see her start to get tearful and begin healing the nun. At that moment, something hit me. Not literally :-p It was more of an "Aha!" moment. I'm not going to say that this movie had some earth-shattering effect on my life, but it did make me think more about my convictions and the role of faith in my heritage. Definitely a must-see.