In Just the Wink of an Eye

With In Just the Wink of an Eye, De Leon created his masterwork, about a retired police sergeant (Vic Silayan) with an unnatural stranglehold over his wife (Charito Solis) and daughter (Charo Santos). His claustrophobically enclosed world is threatened when Santos finds herself pregnant, and forced to marry a young man (Jay Ilagan). Silayan attempts to extend his influence over his son-in-law, who resists; there is a confrontation… De Leon tells a horror story, at the heart of which is a creature all the more terrifying because he’s so familiar – a garrulous, unshaven old man with a huge belly and a hidden .45-calibre handgun. He could be someone you know; he could be your next-door neighbour. Along with this feeling of everyday ordinariness, there is a sense of utter conviction that De Leon brings to the material, to the conflict between domineering father and passive son-in-law. It’s as if De Leon knows these characters well – identifies with them intensely. The film is unsettling in the way it seems so close (because of the intensity) to the filmmaker, while being at the same time so close (because of the realism) to us. As if the gap between our world and De Leon’s more forbidding one is as little as, well, the wink of an eye… (NV)