A comedy for the Ilonggos: ‘With Love, Bridgit’ premieres to laughter and applause

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

Fair warning: spoilers ahead.

Following the wake of last year’s highly acclaimed Candè, filmmaker Kevin Piamonte and ERK Film Production offer a comedy this time—one brimming with follies and foibles most familiar to us. Friends and guests braved last Friday’s gusty showers to witness its premiere and, safe to say, got so much more for their pains. While we were left to ask whether ‘With Love, Bridgit’ is a cinematic diary entry from a most unconventional point of view or social commentary in the cut of high satire, there is little doubt of how it tickled its audience with comic vignettes of life in a barangay facing its impending demise.

The dilemma: Barangay Inday is set for demolition and the distraught residents led by their anguished village captain Shebang (played by Kristoffer Rhys Grabato), loudly and proudly out of the closet, must come to terms with their forthcoming relocation. As in any comedy of errors, the archetypal dramatis personae populate the locale. There are the lovers, Sher and Port (brought to life by the talents of Alexandra Jezrel Valle and Sean Ethan Sotto) ever challenging gender roles and social norms in their romance. And what comic relief is complete without bickering siblings? Rosalinda and Marimar (with Laragene Servando-Retazo and Jastine Felmae Lemos) squabble over linágà recipes and sales, while lovelorn, listless little sister Mercedes (played by Elaisha Losaria Pomida) carries on with her trysts with nary a care in the world. Of course, there are the matronly figures who pontificate over familial matters. There is a mysterious, unseen old man gruesomely coughing to the point of droll exaggeration. There are cameos of people we know.

And then there was Bridgit. Despite the title role, she is hardly the main character in the usual sense. She does provide us with an incessant stream of commentary. Everything is from her (literally low) point of view and it is a joy to hear her chatter. But it is not for her to worry about matters with adult gravitas; rather, she frets about things that help make sense of life: the banter and bickering between characters, the mundane sorrows and joys of the village folk, the torrid affairs ebbing and flowing in the darkness of night — or even her plaintive, tongue-in-cheek search for ‘Ramir’ (a sly nod to a character from a Deriada play, no doubt).

Farce and feuds aside, death and destruction flavor the story. Label it as dark humor, if you must. Strung about like a morbid series of unfortunate events, the consecutive demise of absent characters pushes the narrative forward towards the death of the barangay itself. But the joke is not in the dying but in the deaths—or its aftermaths. Tragic, yes, but peppered with the melodramatic and the implausible, almost as if to paint the entire film as one cinematic lúwa to alleviate the bleakness of the locals’ looming displacement. What could be more Ilonggo than finding something to laugh about in the middle of dire circumstances?

There’s the rub: comedy is a tricky matter, and the auteur has to understand the audience’s humor, pander to it if necessary. Fail in that and you can be assured of an empty cinema, or if one is lucky, a lukewarm reception. Piamonte is grounded enough to sense this and went to great lengths to establish that in comedy, the facetious need not be detached from the convivial or from the cultural, for that matter.  We see glimpses of arnis and zumba exercises set in the common playground, flashes of the Dinagyang’s festival vibe replete with feathers and drumming, the fleeting glance at a bótbot session with a manugbúlong, of linágà concocted (and debated about!) the Ilonggo way, or a parodical hommage to a Bernal monologue inserted at the film’s onset: here is culture to be laughed about in appreciation.

With all its antics about survival and coping in a dog-eat-dog world, ‘Bridgit’ has its what-ifs. Perhaps the plot could have tied up its loose ends better. We could have wished for a lovelier conclusion for Sher and Port’s romance. Or mayhaps that Mercedes gets her just desserts with her brazen elopement. Perhaps the loopholes and frayed character arcs could have been given resolutions. Perhaps there could have been a happier outcome for the residents of Barangay Inday. But there are none of these things — as is often the way with life. So it goes.

And Bridgit? She fades from the narrative but certainly not from our ears. We have heard her chatter throughout the film and nothing else will top that — not even a memorial at the film’s end.

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By all appearances, Kevin Piamonte has burst into comedy in grand fashion, flair and feathers thrown in. The reception at its premiere speaks volumes and it is with little doubt that his film will find its stride with Ilonggo audiences. While regional cinema still gropes its way into the spotlight of mainstream film, we can at least be assured that our Ilonggo filmmakers will always create stories we can cry or laugh about — and yes, ‘With Love, Bridgit’ is a good one to add to that list. Go catch the next screening and have a good guffaw over it.

[The writer is a humanities teacher in one of the private schools in the city. The poster is from ERK Film Production and is used with permission.]