Bugsay rows through Ilonggo memory

By Herman M. Lagon

Bugsay starts with a sound you feel before you hear: wood against water. A paddle slicing through the tide. A stroke, then another. Slow. Steady. Certain. That is how the film enters the room. No fanfare. No exclamation points. Just a quiet insistence: “This is a story you already know, but have never really seen.”

That morning at Cinema 3, SM City Iloilo, the air felt different. People hushed themselves without being told. The Tatoy clan filled the rows—parents, grandchildren, cousins, friends, loved ones who woke up early for the day’s screening. Fisherfolk friends. Loyal workers who grew old in the restaurant. A few curious students. My daughter, Parvane, sat beside me with a mental notebook. “Para ma-review ta dayon,” she whispered. Truth is, we were also there as family—Kevin Pison Piamonte, my cousin from the Lagon-Fuentes-Pison side, had personally invited us to the maiden screening. Sharing the same second row with us, he looked at ease, as if the story would speak for itself, as if he trusted that the community sitting there would understand its silences as much as its scenes.

Kevin has always known how to trust a story. One does not accidentally create works like Baboy Talunon, Solo, or Candé. Those films carry a signature—lyrical but lived-in, beautiful but not pretentious, mindful of the people whose lives they portray. His Baboy Talunon winning Best International Short Film in India, his FAMAS win for Solo, and the red carpet success of Candé earlier this year are not career decorations. They are milestones built from consistency, from showing up, from listening. I saw that same instinct back when he directed the 50th anniversary play Journey to Forever at Ateneo de Iloilo, more than a decade ago. Even then, he worked like someone who understood that stories are living things—wild, fragile, and deserving of care.

This is why Bugsay feels so deeply Kevin: it is a story carried gently, even when its edges are uneven. The documentary traces the life of Honorato “Tatoy” Espinosa—fisherman, father of nine, husband, icon of Villa, and the unlikely founder of Tatoy’s Manokan and Seafoods. For many Ilonggos, Tatoy’s is not a restaurant; it is a memory. Sunday lunches. Birthday gatherings. After-mass merienda. The salty air of Villa before ‘reclamation,’ the taste of talaba that never pretended to be anything else. Bugsay taps into that nostalgia, but does not drown in it. It shows the struggle behind the legend: the squatting years, the borrowed spaces, the fear of not earning enough for nine children, the slow and steady build from nipa shack to culinary landmark.

The film, however, is not seamless. Few reenactments feel stiff. A sprinkle of lines sound coached. Parvane leaned toward me at one point and whispered, “ka cute sg mga servers.” She also noted the “pilot acting”—those early scenes where emotion has not yet settled into truth. Some “commentary lines” drop too obviously, like they were inserted to connect scenes that could have breathed on their own. But then, without warning, a scene lands so well it feels like someone tugged a string under your ribs. The actor playing young Tatoy, Ron Matthews Espinosa, is remarkable in his quiet dignity. The actress playing Tatoy’s wife Lola Consejo, Joce Sta. Maria, is even better—she carries the weight of Ilonggo womanhood without theatrical excess. Their scenes feel honest, the way old photographs feel honest: imperfect but real.

And this is where the creative documentary rises. It shows the contrasts that shaped the Espinosa family: humble meals shared over borrowed tables; the struggle for land and livelihood; faith rituals before fishing—oración, songs whispered by the sea, small offerings left where someone passed; the belief that trees and places have keepers; the shaping of values, not just recipes. These parts reminded me of studies on how cultural rituals help families create meaning under uncertainty (Park, 2010). The film does not explain these rituals. It simply shows them, unadorned, like everyday truths. That choice gives the documentary its backbone.

You will know Bugsay loves Ilonggo food because the film treats every dish like a character with its own heartbeat. The camera lingers on the sinigang’s rising steam, the kinilaw na tangigue that glows like it was caught an hour ago, the chopsuey that looks unapologetically homemade, and the baked talaba that Ilonggos always swear tastes best by the sea. Then there is the grilled rotisserie chicken, the slabs of lechon—baboy and manok—the scallops, bangus, squid, shrimp, and every grilled, steamed, or baked seafood that shaped our collective memories of Villa. It is not product placement. It is a celebration. Bugsay honors Tatoy’s not only through biography but through taste, reminding viewers that Ilonggo cuisine is its own language. In those sequences, the film is seamless, almost poetic, as if saying that food is history, livelihood, and love served on a plate.

Some parts left viewers hoping for a bit more clarity—perhaps a cleaner sound mix or a timeline showing how Nori’s became Tatoy’s or how a fisherman built a food institution. These are sincere questions, born from admiration for the journey. But the absence also reveals something important: this story was told by the people who lived it, not by actors trained to deliver neat arcs. Working with actual family members, workers, and friends makes the documentary authentic, but it also limits how much narrative shaping can be done. It becomes more memoir than movie—and that is not a flaw if the audience understands what it is trying to be.

One scene has settled in my memory: that hospital moment when the camera glides slowly across the hallway, catching parents trying to stay strong in tears while their two children, hit in a road accident, are rushed into the ER. It is quiet, raw, and painfully real. The room fell silent. Even the usual cinema rustle paused. In that instant, you see what Iloilo’s shoreline communities carry beneath their humor and resilience. Loss. Fear. Hope. The kind of emotions that rarely make it to the city’s glossy brochures. It reminded me of Kevin’s approach in Solo, where the grief of pandemic losses was told with a restraint that allowed viewers to breathe inside the sadness. That same instinct appears in Bugsay, giving the documentary texture beyond business success.

Another standout moment is when a longtime worker—thirty-five years in service—shares how the Espinosa family treated her well enough that she was able to send her children to college. No drama. No sweeping music. Just a woman speaking her truth while rinsing the rice in the basin, the way honesty sometimes comes out in the middle of ordinary chores. It speaks to the leadership philosophy that sociological studies call “relational labor”—the invisible work of kindness and fairness that sustains communities over decades (Hobson, 2015). Tatoy’s was built on grilled chicken and seafood, yes, but also on a quiet ethic of the dignity of labor.

Watching all this with Parvane made the experience richer. She caught details I missed—forced conversations, choppy sound transitions, and moments where the actors seemed unsure whether to follow instructions or trust instinct. But she also appreciated what was real: the spontaneity of the Vasquez father-and-son tandem, the raw grief in the hospital, the warmth of community scenes, the taste of Ilonggo rituals woven into the narrative. “Gamo siya, Papa… pero nami,” she said. Chaotic, but beautiful. And she was right. Bugsay is not trying to be a shiny documentary. It is trying to be honest, unvarnished one.

After the film ended, we stepped out into the bright mall hallway. People were buzzing—some proud, some nostalgic, some curious. I realized then that Bugsay accomplishes something many films fail to do: it makes the viewer want to talk, to ask, to remember, to argue, to defend. It pushes conversation. It invites reflection. It reminds Ilonggos that heritage is not preserved by museums alone; it is kept alive by families who keep telling their stories, even if the telling is imperfect. Teachers know this well. We see students obsess over finished projects without understanding the process that shaped them. Bugsay disrupts that habit. It insists on showing the process, the mess, the trying, the faith behind the paddle.

If you love Iloilo, if you have ever eaten by the sea, if you have ever watched someone you admire build something with their bare hands, then Bugsay is worth your time. It is not flawless—and it does not pretend to be—but it is sincere. And sincerity, in any art, is harder to achieve than polish. Kevin’s work has always leaned toward sincerity. This documentary proves that he is not done telling stories that matter.

In the end, Bugsay leaves one quiet truth: legacy is not about winning. It is about paddling. Sometimes the sea is calm, sometimes it is not, but the rhythm of the paddle—the intention behind each stroke—moves the story forward. The film honors the man who paddled, yes. But it also honors the community that kept paddling with him.

And maybe that is why the film works. It is not just a documentary about a restaurant. It is a creative documentary about a life lived with purpose, a family carried by grit, and a community shaped by memory. It asks us, gently but firmly, to look at the processes we often ignore and the people whose quiet work holds up our everyday comforts. In a world obsessed with results, Bugsay reminds us that the paddle matters more than the destination.

***

Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.