MANILA – We are a culture obsessed with beauty pageants. Not satisfied with winning a Miss World or Miss International title, the Philippines seemingly lost its collective minds when Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach snagged the Miss Universe title after almost forty years of not winning the crown.
We are a nation of OFWs. From domestic helpers to engineers to advertising executives, Overseas Filipino Workers have seen a veritable Pinoy diaspora as our countrymen have sought better working and living opportunities outside our shores.
Bringing these two disparate elements together seem like a stretch to most of us, yet in Hong Kong, in a land where Filipinos have been visiting as tourists or working for decades, they come together every weekend to show off their talents, intelligence, and love for dressing up. That is the premise behind director Baby Ruth Villarama’s Sunday Beauty Queen.
A first for the Metro Manila Film Festival in its nearly four decades of existence, Sunday Beauty Queen is a documentary, without the big name stars or celebrity power we’ve come to expect of locally-produced films at this time of the year. It is also intelligent, insightful, and powerful, completely devoid of the inane scripts, bland storylines, or cliched melodramas from past MMFF entries.
Several people are interviewed, with people who have been working in Hong Kong ranging from just a few months to over a decade, as they deal with living conditions of nearly 24-hour employment for six days a week in a foreign land. Though many finished with college degrees, the reality of earning nearly thrice as much abroad as they would here in the Philippines, as well as providing for their families, is chronicled here as well.
One of the means by which they escape or have some semblance of fun is by entering into beauty pageants organized by fellow Filipinos. On their only day off work, Sunday, these women spend hours practicing their choreography, getting their make-up done, and representing their respective provinces and regions to earn a crown, a trophy, and some extra cash that they can remit to their loved ones.
The stories that are shared can be harsh. Some employers often don’t let their helpers eat with them or sleep in spaces no larger than a small bathroom. If an employer chooses to terminate a domestic helper, they would have just 14 days to find new employment, or they would be sent home to the Philippines. Getting sent home means not just paying the Hong Kong government, but the Philippine government as well. And the stories of brutality done by Hong Kong natives against some Filipinos were just barely explored in the film.
Yet there are some Filipinos lucky enough to have found good employers, those who value their contributions, and appreciate how these Filipinas have helped alleviate their own working days. From cooking meals and cleaning homes, to taking their kids to and from school, or taking care of their elderly family members, there are still employers who profess their gratitude for these Filipinas who have been invaluable to giving a semblance of stability to their homes.
Yet these same OFWs still look forward to those weekends when, for just a few hours, they are among their countrymen, speaking their own language, and sharing their experiences with one another. Though they may be competing against each other, they are together in representing their respective regions and provinces, and this allows them to see snippets of the land they left behind.
Sunday Beauty Queen isn’t a film that pulls its punches. The production team of Chuck Gutierrez and Tuko Film Productions/Buchi Boy Entertainment/Artikulo Uno Productions or TBA show Hong Kong for all of its shopping majesty. They don’t hesitate to show that not all lives there are perfect, though. The scenes of the Hong Kong skyline or the views of the harbor with the famous junks or the long train rides root the film firmly in that country. Yet when the Filipinos come together, it almost seems like they are just gathered together at a local barangay, gossiping and sharing stories with the optimism that Filipinos are famous for.
The mere fact that Sunday Beauty Queen has been produced is a triumph. Documentaries are notorious for not earning at the box office, and this subject in particular might hit a little too close to home for many of our countrymen. To have it released at the Metro Manila Film Festival is an even bigger victory owing to the idiotic fare that we have been subjected to in years past. Yet if the organizers of the MMFF truly want to show the breadth and scope of Filipino filmmaking, then Sunday Beauty Queen is a film that needed to be made and shown to meet that requirement.
No, not everyone gets a happy ending or finds the best employer, but that is the reality of OFW life, and Sunday Beauty Queen succeeds in showing that reality, amid a barrage of tiaras, sashes, and trophies.
