Joanna Ampil
Candida Marasigan
Overview
A musical tale about two impoverished sisters' anguish over whether or not to sell the final masterpiece of their recluse father days before the second world war, in Manila.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
4 min readThe Portrait: A Song of Manila, Before the Storm
I keep thinking about the way the piano sounds in The Portrait. Not the music itself—though the score, by Ryan Cayabyab, is lush and aching—but the way the keys are struck, the way the notes hang in the air like smoke in a room with no windows. It’s the sound of a family trying to hold itself together in the face of history’s indifference.
And history, in 1941 Manila, is about to become very indifferent indeed.
Loy Arcenas’ film is a musical, though not in the way we’ve been trained to expect. There are no spontaneous dance numbers in the streets, no chorus lines erupting from the marketplace. Instead, the songs emerge from the characters like sighs—private, melancholic, sometimes defiant.
The story follows two sisters, Candida (Joanna Ampil) and Paula (Rachel Alejandro), who live in the shadow of their father’s legacy. He was a painter, a recluse, and now, days before the Japanese invasion, they’re faced with a choice: sell his final masterpiece to a wealthy collector, or cling to it as the last piece of him they have left. The painting, like the film itself, is a portrait of something already fading.
What’s striking about The Portrait is how quietly it unfolds. Arcenas, a theater director making his feature debut, treats the camera like a guest in a home where grief is the unspoken language. The film is set almost entirely within the confines of the sisters’ house in Intramuros, the walled city of old Manila, and the walls feel like they’re closing in long before the war does.
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThey pulled Best Picture out of the malls the day after Christmas.
The Portrait, the export title for Ang Larawan, opened in the 2017 Metro Manila Film Festival on December 25. Producer GR Rodis later recited the theater math. "First we opened with 53, then the next day we were 26, and then 23, and then 33, and then 56." MMFF spokesman Noel Ferrer told DZMM the producers sat with mall owners after day-one sales and agreed to yank the film from houses they decided were not their market, with a January 1 return. Pablo Tariman at The Philippine Star counted 15 theaters gone before awards night. Superhero pictures and slapstick ate the holiday. latestnetflix.com's read is that the musical finished seventh of eight entries at 29 million pesos, on a 25 million peso budget.
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Twenty years of a play, then a leftover festival slot.
Nick Joaquin's 1950 drama A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino became Rolando Tinio's 1997 Tagalog musical, with Ryan Cayabyab's songs. Culturtain Musicat, run by Girlie Rodis and Celeste Legaspi, had staged it at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Rachel Alejandro, who played Paula onstage in 1998 opposite Legaspi, came back as star and producer. Director Loy Arcenas, once a Broadway set designer, asked for a year of rehearsals. Cameras rolled in June 2015. Six hundred costumed extras walked a La Naval procession in Intramuros. The family house was the Villavicencio ancestral home in Taal, Batangas, for eleven days. Raising the money took a year. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the Quezon City Film Fund, Resorts World Manila, and the Film Development Council were among the financiers. , ,
The MMFF script committee passed on it in July. Tokyo took the finished film on October 30. Variety's Richard Kuipers, writing from the festival, called it a class act with "terrific tunes" and a dream cast led by West End actress Joanna Ampil. In November Manila handed Culturtain one of the leftover slots for completed pictures. The Cinema Evaluation Board graded it a unanimous A. , 
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Candida tried to walk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7T2DAUUvn8
Ampil plays Candida Marasigan, the older sister who would rather go hungry than sell their recluse father's last canvas. CNN Philippines Life reported she tried to quit twice in rehearsal. The part had been offered in 2008, then again in 2012. Alejandro told GMA that Candida sings through nearly the whole two hours and that Arcenas wanted someone the right age whose voice could sit beside Ampil's. Alejandro, already a pop singer, took lessons so the blend would stop fighting. This was Ampil's first film. On December 27 she won Best Actress. She said her parents' Christmas request had been simple. "Just bring home the trophy." The picture took Best Picture, Cayabyab's score, Gino Gonzales's production design, and the Gatpuno Antonio J. Villegas Cultural Award. Paul Soriano, picking up Best Director for Siargao, told the room Rockwell had been a full house and that he knew what Team Larawan was going through. Culturtain's November 2017 trailer is the one that survives, two sisters arguing in song over Cayabyab's orchestra. , , ,
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