And the Breadwinner Is...

♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Bambi Salvador (Vice Ganda) has been working as an OFW in Taiwan for more than a decade now. When his contract is not renewed due to unfavorable blood test results in his annual medical examination, he flies back home to Pampanga unannounced expecting his siblings to welcome him in their house which has supposedly been already renovated and celebrate his birthday at the same time. Not only have they forgotten his special day, he also arrives in the same old house he left 15 years ago sans the improvements where the money he has been sending all these years should have gone. When a case of mistaken identity leads everyone to believe that Bambi has died of a road accident, a representative from the company of his life insurance informs the family that they are indicated as his beneficiaries and are on their way to receiving 10 million pesos. However, Bambi is alive and well. Can they put aside their differences as a family to put on a good show for the money?

I was expecting Jun Lana but what I got was Wenn Deramas, bless his soul. I was beginning to wonder where all the acting nominations came from because the film’s two-hour run was mostly slapstick. And then we reach the confrontation scene, the pride and joy of every Filipino family reunion where adrenaline runs high and everyone is happily trying to gaslight one another, tears and all. For the entirety of those 12 minutes, the convincing Kapampangan accents and words totally evaporate as the actors revert to full-on Tagalog. Everyone brings their A game. So this is why Jhong Hilario and Kokoy de Santos got nominated for Supporting. Justified.

The problem is that those 12 minutes, along with the additional five which is a one-on-one between Vice Ganda and Malou de Guzman as the mom suffering from Alzheimer’s, are just so tonally distinct from the rest of the film. It could’ve been a commercial break or a totally different short film. If anything, the scene exists as if telling you to give the actors involved their acting accolades because they can act, in all fairness to them. Even then, it somehow feels forced, like an obligatory moment of brilliance in an otherwise silly and irreverent feature whose real purpose is to rake in lots of cash during the holiday season.

There comes a time in the life of every comedic actor when s/he suddenly pivots to drama like some sort of litmus test, an effort to find out whether their audience who have known them forever as providers of laughter would stick with them if they suddenly changed genres. Vice Ganda is going through that phase now, and this film is a decent effort to show everyone that he can do drama if he wants to. In any case there is a delicate balance here between career progression and business concerns. Given how And the Breadwinner Is… is leading the other 10 films in terms of box office returns, I’d say mission accomplished!

If Vice Ganda really wants to hone his craft in acting because that seems to be the only avenue left for him to explore –I mean come on his films have a cumulative box office performance equivalent to billions of pesos so there is nothing left to prove in that department– he would probably be better off producing an indie vehicle that will allow him to fully experiment with his dramatic acting chops WITHOUT a hint of his usual physical comedy style. One too many comedians have done so before, there is no reason why he couldn't. But then again the MMFF is not the appropriate venue for that. Try Cinemalaya.

One thing I admire about this venture, though, is how this could have easily been just an excuse to pivot to drama, a mere acting vehicle for its lead star, and yet Vice Ganda decided to tackle what is perhaps one of the most cruel among the many manifestations of us Filipinos' damaged culture which is that of designating a lone breadwinner for each family, an individual who is not just expected but rather indirectly obliged to give up his/her life so s/he can be the family ATM. This is one toxic Filipino belief system that will be difficult to eradicate but hey, at least starting a discourse about it is a good start, no? So kudos to that.