There’s a whole landscape of Filipino movies about the OFW experience as this is a phenomenon that has struck our society so deep. At some point, they have been called our present-day heroes. Films like ‘Anak’ and ‘Transit’ and ‘Hello Love Goodbye’ and the documentary ‘Sunday Beauty Queens’ are just some examples of films that tackle the emotional landscape of this set of people. So when director Jun Lana (co-writing with Daisy G Cayanan and Jumbo A. Albano) and Vice Ganda team up to tackle this narrative in an MMFF entry, it’s bound to get a lot of attention.
This is my first Vice Ganda movie (I know, this is something I plan to fix by watching the rest of his filmography soon) so I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. I’ve seen snippets of Vice on ‘It’s Showtime’ when it shows up on social media or when I’m on a bus and am familiar with his quick wit and razor sharp delivery of jokes. But to see it in action in a film is something else. The way the audience reacts to every punchline shows his mastery of comedy and that is unquestionable.
‘And the Breadwinner is…’ is the story of Bambi Salvador (Vice Ganda), an OFW working in Taiwan to help support her family in Pampanga. She works multiple jobs and has sacrificed their identity to build a house back at home that she and her family can truly call home. But the sudden death of one of her co-workers encourages her to return home early to be with the people that she loves only to find that her home has not been built and her family has wasted away all her money on failed businesses and frivolous things. In frustration and anger, she leaves home and is mistaken for dead. They discover that her life insurance would give the family ten million pesos and Bambi and her family decide that to pay off all their debt and start anew, Bambi would continue to pretend she’s dead.
The first two acts of the film is messy, firing at all directions. There’s a feeling that each scene is more a skit, a gag, before moving to the next. The narrative’s flow is broken by these moments of humor. Each family member – from the younger brother Biboy (Jhong Hilario) and his wife Mayet (Gladys Reyes), to her even younger siblings Boy (Kokoy De Santos) and Buneng (Maris Racal), and her eldest sister Baby (Eugene Domingo), who had abandoned the family to live and work in Italy – gets to have their own story and while it’s an ensemble piece, at 123 minutes, it makes the film seem bloated as each one has just the same amount of story time to play out. Adding upon this is the deception plot regarding the insurance money as an inspector, Anton (Anthony Jennings), is trying to find out whether Bambi is truly dead or not.
It’s a hodge-podge of scenes and gags that range from slapstick to witty comedy, bringing back characters from Vica Ganda’s filmography, and situational comedy that can hit or miss depending on the range of one’s taste. While the delivery is outstanding, there are jokes that make fun of fat people or ridiculing someone’s appearance and hurtful physical comedy that’s just not my cup of tea. But these elicit the most laughs because of Vice’s impeccable timing.
When the film slows down to become tender, especially when it’s geared towards the queer stories in the film; is when it gets touching. Joel Torre’s Popsie, the deceased patriarch of the family, has the most touching scenes in flashbacks. The way by which he adores Bambi is truly beautiful to see. The acceptance is something we need to see in films more to help normalize this. And the way by which Bambi returns that acceptance to Boy, who comes out to him creates a chain of kindness directed towards the community. It’s one of the more moving parts of this film handled expertly by Vice, Torre, and De Santos.
But as messy as the first two acts are, the final act is when all that chaos is channeled into the film’s shift into drama. All the gags and the jokes, all of the misunderstandings and snide comments against each other, funnel into a confrontation of the whole family and Bambi ends up delivering an almost ten-minute monologue that embodies a whole lot of unsaid resentments from the OFW community. It’s a litany of the things that, as a culture, we are afraid to say out loud because we put family first before our own selves. It’s a magnificent space for Vice Ganda to show his acting chops as he throws out every emotion that feels like it has been trapped there forever, for the fifteen years that Bambi had suffered alone in another country. It’s visceral. It’s explosive. It’s done in a one-shot that puts Vice’s acting front and center. The whole movie was pushing towards this confrontation and it’s the reason why you should see this film.
My Rating:
And the Breadwinner Is… is now showing in cinemas. Check showtimes and buy your tickets here.
