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Moral
Directed byMarilou Diaz-Abaya
Screenplay byRicky Lee
Starring
CinematographyManolo Abaya
Edited by
  • Manolo Abaya
  • Marc Tarnate
Music byGeorge Canseco
Production
company
Seven Star Productions
Running time
138 minutes
CountryPhilippines
Language Filipino

source: https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=lTSWDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT185&dq=moral+marilou+diaz+abaya&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB94u5-dbpAhUPyYsBHfpHByYQ6AEIQTAD#v=onepage&q=moral%20marilou%20diaz%20abaya&f=false

Moral is a 1982 Filipino drama film directed by Marilou Diaz-Abaya and written by Ricky Lee.


Plot

Joey, Kathy, Sylvia, and Maritess are four students at the University of the Philippines Diliman. The film begins with the marriage of Maritess to Dodo, and follows the occasionally intersecting lives of the four friends.

Maritess is initially content with simply being a housewife for Dado. At the friends' gradution, Maritess goes into labor and gives birth to a baby boy. She experiences difficulties taking care of the baby, including quarreling with her mother-in-law, postpartum depression, and not having any more time for herself. Over time, she grows discontented with her marriage and lack of freedom and tells Maggie of her desire to leave Dodo. One day, Dodo rapes Maritess; she leaves him and temporarily lives with Sylvia. She eventually allows them to get back together on the condition that she is treated as an equal in the relationship.

Joey is a drug user who regularly sleeps around with different men, and has a tense relationship with her mother Maggie. She is in love with activist Jerry and continually makes advances at him, which are rejected. She becomes pregnant, and asks for money from her friends and mother for an abortion. Before that can happen, she miscarries and is told by a doctor that she is incapable of having children. Jerry joins the rebellion in the mountains and asks Joey to let his wife Nita live with her. Nita stays with Joey and does housework for her, until she learns that Jerry has been killed. Nita tells Joey and then leaves to join the rebellion.

Sylvia has separated from her husband Robert, whom she still has feelings for. She and Robert continue to spend time together as they share custody of their son, and Syvlia becomes friends with Robert's partner Celso. She meets Ernie, a fellow teacher at the school she works for, and the two begin a relationship together — her first serious relationship since her marriage with Robert. One day, a woman shows up at her house and states that she is Ernie's wife, and that Ernie has another wife in the province whom he has abandoned. Sylvia breaks up with Ernie.

Kathy is a mediocre singer aspiring to become a star.


Cast

Development

Diaz-Abaya's 1980 film Brutal, which was also written by Lee and produced by Jesse Ejercito, was not only a critical success, but also achieved box office success at the Metro Manila Film Festival, grossing more than even Ang Pnday with action star Fernando Poe Jr.[1] Following that success, Ejercito aimed to produce another movie with Diaz-Abaya starring the two main stars of Brutal: Gina Alajar and Amy Austria. Following infighting between Ejercito and Austria, she was removed from the film. At this point, Lee already had a finished script; its plot revolved around two singers, a talented one and an untalented one, as the less talented one found greater career success. Following the departure of Austria from the project, Diaz-Abaya and Lee decided to be more daring with the film, and Lee rewrote the script to be about four friends, while retaining the original story of an untalented singer who found career success. Lee wrote the script for Moral simultaneously with the script for Ishmael Bernal's Himala, and bith films competed at the 1982 Metro Manila Film Festival.[2]

Moral is considered to part of a loose trilogy of feminist films directed by Diaz-Abaya and written by Lee that directly discussed issues affecting women, along with Brutal and Karnal.[3] The film is set in the Philippines in the late 1970s and early 1980s during the Martial Law era, described by Asian Cinevision as a time of "time of moral flux", noting that the film's characters "find themselves in situations when old values and principles no longer apply."[1] Diaz-Abaya and Lee also decided to examine topics they deemed to be taboo at the time in the film, such as homosexuality, marital rape, and the New People's Army, while eschewing traditional narrative structure and to create a movie with "no plot", as described by Lee. He stated that the film contains no inciting incidents and has no story; Professor Rommel Rodriguez of the University of the Philippines Diliman noted that the film, as it simply portrayed the lives of its four main characters, did not have a clear beginning, middle, or end, leaving viewers without certainty as to the ultimate fates of the characters.[4] Filmmaker and film historian Nick Deocampo noted that the major differences in the personalities of the four friends allowed the film to explore the different aspects of womanhood in the tumultuous 1970s.[5] Lee deemed the script as one of his most personal, as he used stories and anecdotes from his real friends as inspiration for the events of the film.[2] Diaz-Abaya also considered as one of her "most sentimentally important" films.[6]

Release

Moral was initially dismissed by most critics and the general public. Diaz-Abaya herself noted that she was "not surprised at all" at the lack of favorable audience reception to the film due to its unconventional structure.[1] At the Metro Manila Film Festival, it was overshadowed by Himala, which won Best Picture.[7] A few notable critics had positive opinions of Moral on initial release: National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera, film scholar Joel David, as well as fellow directors Bernal and Eddie Romero. Over time, its popularity among film critics increased, caused in part by repeated cable showings and retrospectives of works written by Lee.[6] By 1989, in a poll of critcs and filmmakers commissioned by David to determine the greatest Filipino movies ever made, Moral ranked 12th.[8] According to Tolentino, Moral helped change her image among critics as an actress who only appeared in "sexy movies," as it showcased her acting abilities.[9]

The ABS-CBN Film Restoration Project released a digitally restored and remastered version of Moral in 2017. Initially, the project deemed it impossible to restore as there was no surviving copy of the film negatives that had not been heavily damaged. The copy found at the film archives of the Cultural Center of the Philippines had been severely damaged by flooding and a lack of air conditioning at the storage facility.[10] A restorable copy was subsequently sourced from the collection of the Film Development Council of the Philippines, which took nearly 2600 restoration hours to restore by Italian company L’Immagine Ritrovata.[11] The restoration did not completely resolve the issues with the film, particularly regarding its color, due to severe mould damage.[10] The restored version premiered at the 2017 Cinema One Originals Film Festival's Restored Classics section.[12]

In 2003, a sequel to Moral was released taking place twenty years after the events of the original film, entitled Noon at Ngayon: Pagsasamang Kay Ganda, with only Laurice Guillen reprising her role as Joey's mother.[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Marilou Diaz-Abaya, Obsessions and Transitions: A Biographical Survey". Asian Cinevision. July 23, 2013. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
  2. ^ a b Abunda, Boy (host) (2014). "Interview with Ricky Lee". Inside the Cinema Circle. Event occurs at 23 minutes. Cinema One.
  3. ^ |David, Randy (March 9, 1997). "Marilou's Milagros". Retrieved June 7, 2020.
  4. ^ "Gawad Plaridel Lecture 2015" (PDF). Plaridel. 13 (2): 203–216. December 2016.
  5. ^ Deocampo, Nick (2017). Sine Gabay: A Film Study Guide. Anvil Publishing, Inc.
  6. ^ a b c Tariman, Pablo (August 3, 2003). "Moral then and now according to direk Marilou Diaz-Abaya". The Philippine Star. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
  7. ^ David, Joel (May 2015). "Millennial Traversals: Outliers, Juvenilia, and Quondam Popcult Blabbery" (PDF). Unitas. 88 (1): 25. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
  8. ^ Labastilla, Skilty (December 2017). "On Film Polls and Pinoy Rebyu". Plaridel. 14 (2): 203.
  9. ^ Abunda, Boy (February 15, 2018). "Lorna recalls favorite films". The Philippine Star. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
  10. ^ a b Katigbak, Leo (Interviewee) (July 19, 2019). Sagip Pelikula. Orange Magazine. Event occurs at 17 minutes.
  11. ^ "Moral". Far East Film Festival. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
  12. ^ "Restored Vilma Santos classics featured on Cinema One Originals festival". Interaksyon. November 15, 2017. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
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