“Her Locket,” a generation of Chinese ethos

Even if producer-actress Rebecca Chuaunsu says that “Her Locket” is a simple, low-budgetted film, it shows otherwise.

The production value, especially the art direction of Jag Concepcion, is an expensive array of authentic materials from an old house as most of the setting to its sets of “muebles” to the costumes befitting an era like the ‘70s to the colored small caged bird as a symbol of a young dream being crushed by an oppressive patriarch.

It is an interplay of Filipino-Chinese tradition meticulously displayed onscreen.

What more if it is a story of a demented Chinese woman who got married during her younger age to a Filipino guy against the family’s customs, was forced by her parents into an arranged marriage to a wealthy Chinese scion only to discover that her matched fiance is the boyfriend of her brother who forged their dad’s signature in the last will and testament of an inheritance?

Naturally, this denouvement is the most tour de force of the whole structure that sends the audience into awe if not perplexity.

The film costs a million bucks, indeed.

We hope that it recoups its million investments so that Rebecca can make more films of her liking.

Chuaunsu as Jewel Ouyang in her octogenarian years is plausible in her role as the dementia stricken mama who contrivedly remembers all her colorful things past by flashing them back whenever she wears her locket necklace.

The ensemble acting is commendable from the cast made up of professional and competent actors like Elora Espano who essays the role of Teresa, Jewel’s caregiver who later steals the locket necklace for her  vanity of facial aesthetics she plans for three hundred thousand pesos; Boo Gabunida who plays the lawyer-son of Jewel, Kyle Nicolas; Rolly inocencio as the court defender of Magnus Ouyang (Francis Mata), the suspect in the falsification of family documents; Tommy Alejandrino who portrays Dave Nicolas, Jewel’s Filipino college sweetheart she married but cut short by death and the other outstanding thespians we learned as theater actors.

This saga of a post-Regal Films’ “Mano Po” delineation speaks of a tapestry of Rebecca’s autobiographical and fictional concoction as she, too, admitted, during the Q&A portion after the premiere screening of the movie at a Gateway cinema last week.

“Her Locket” one of the entries to the 2024 Sinag Maynila Film Festival organized by Solar Entertainment and internationally acclaimed filmmaker Brillante Ma. Mendoza, runs from September 4 to 10, 2024. Boy Villasanta