Insiang is not an easy film to watch. It’s hard to look at, not because the sprawling slums of Manila itself are ugly– the scenes are excellently blocked, shot, and edited, actually– but because of the way poverty has further degraded the status of women in the area, with the lack of resources keeping them vulnerable to violence. It’s unrelenting. From the casual jokes made in the background, to the physical harm actually wielded against the title character, director Lino Brocka systematically outlines the way poverty has cut off Insiang’s options, being forced to rely on a resentful mother and lustful men. It makes for an unflattering, claustrophobic depiction of the capital, which is why it was temporarily banned from screening, but Insiang was a necessary, ugly portrait of what the then-administration allowed to flourish.
"This intense, furious melodrama, by the Filipino director Lino Brocka, fuses its narrative energy with documentary veracity."
— Richard Brody
A story about the life of a young girl living with her mother in the slums of Manila, which becomes unbearable when her mother's young boyfriend moves in with them.
After her father left them in Tondo, young laundrywoman Insiang has not been treated well, bearing the resentment of her mother Tonya in silence, and hoping to escape by marrying her boyfriend Bebot. However, life becomes unbearable when Tonya starts dating Dado, the strong and violent village butcher.
It’s a harrowing watch, but Insiang doesn’t revel in the pain that the women face– instead, the physical violence are mostly depicted off-screen, except of course that second-to-the-last moment that was quite cathartic.
Sad to see how relevant it still is nearly half a century later.
Cannes
1 nomination
"Such an unforgiving vision of urban poverty justifies the excesses in this domestic drama."
— Jose B. Capino