“He seemed like such a nice boy…” The director skillfully doses the tension, drawing a powerful portrait of the Philippine society in which the truth is defined by those who can afford a better lawyer.
We are watching the strong heroine’s searching for justice and crashing into walls of institutional incompetence, economic exclusion, and animosity from her family and neighbors. Guitierrez’s shocking, powerful debut is a psychodrama played out in closed, intimate spaces, which avoids pitying the victim and does not overflow with sentimentality. This is only the beginning of her journey – a lone fight for the basic right to safety takes a lot of determination, bordering on desperation. The perpetrator is her own husband, whom the officers won’t even effectively isolate from the protagonist fighting for her life and protecting her six-year-old daughter.
Raymund Bibay Gutierrez for Verdict – Philippines | 2019 – 126 minutes – FictionĪ young woman with determination in her eyes, sits down at a desk at a police station to finally make an official statement regarding her battery.
