Escape

Serge Osmena (Richard Gomez) and Geny Lopez (Christopher De Leon), loving family men and sober scions of Filipino society, are suddenly arrested by the military. The step-by-step procedure by which they descend into the maw of Ferdinand Marcos’ Martial Law regime, from invitation to interrogation to imprisonment, are clearly set out in Jose ‘Pete’ Lacaba’s lean, unfussy script (Lacaba himself was at one point a Marcos detainee). The film proceeds to outline the change in the prisoners’ characters, particularly Geny’s – from a man paralysed by emotional reserve and the fear of harm coming to his family (Serge’s is safely out of reach in the United States), he comes to realise that the only way out of his situation is escape – and so he does, not with derring-do and automatic weaponry, but with cunning, patience and more than a little luck. Roño’s film is perhaps one of the better evocations of this period in Filipino history, when Marcos held all of the country in a tight grip, and would do so for the next twenty years. As Geny, Christopher De Leon gives a nicely understated performance, but the standout is a quick cameo by Teresa Loyzaga as a memorably mad Imelda Marcos, come to sprinkle petals on the coffin of her enemy. (NV)