How Can Stella Get Her Groove Back?

Saturday

July 29, 2017

We were watching Crying Ladies, and I couldn't help but think of the times in my life when it seemed that everything was going wrong. With all the things I've been through, it is quite a subtle understatement.

Yet, I also feel grateful beyond words that those days are over, and that I have survived and even emerged as a better person.

I like the Stella, the lead character, primarily because I love Sharon Cuneta. She really is a good person who had just fallen on hard times.

But there is more to a person that his or her circumstances. She loves her son more than than anything else, and I've known few things more painful that having your child taken away.

Her greatest dream is to go to Japan as a singer, make enough money and get her son back from her ex-husband Guido (Ricky Davao).

The problem is that she kept getting passed over at auditions.

And so, she has to be creative to make ends meet.

She has a clever way to save money on transportation. She would tell the jeepney driver to take her to a particular destination which is on a different route. The driver would then tell her that she got the wrong ride.

And so, she'll get off, presumably to find the right one, but she would already be where she meant to go.

She can even get a free ride on a bus. Once, she passed a group of people staging a rally The bus came and she got in, giving the same speech that the protest leaders were saying, blessing the kind support of the passengers as she collected the money.

Then one day, she met a young man named Wilson (Eric Quizon) who offered her a job. Wilson was arranging for a traditional Chinese funeral for his father. There should be people who cry and wail loudly to show the gods that the deceased was a good man.

Stella got her friends Choleng (Angel Aquino) and Rhoda (Hilda Koronel), a former movie actress whose greatest role is as a woman crushed to death in "Darna and The Giants" starring Vilma Santos.

All Stella and her cohorts have to do is to lament like crazy in a campy show of grief. But of course, it's not easy to shed tears, so Rhoda gave them the secret of movies tars: Vick's VapoRub.

Then Stella finds out who she has to cry for – the same man who had sent her to prison and destroyed her life.

Crying Ladies

A Film By Mark Meily

Photo courtesy of USA.NewOnNetFlix.com