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When a film is four hours long, you'll always find someone who says it's too long. In this case you could also wonder why the film isn't longer. It provides the impression of showing fragments from the life of a girl. They look like home movies, with the style, sloppiness, technical imperfection that makes home movies so charming. And especially if you know the people, you can keep watching. Towards the end of the film, we have got to know the girl named after Rita Hayworth and wouldn't mind watching for longer. Because what is going to happen to Rita, whom we first saw as a child and later as an adolescent beauty, played by Ness Roque? Who wouldn't want to see the young woman Rita? Might she still be dancing on her bed in her bedroom?
However all the so-called film fragments were acted and a lot of work was done to make sure they looked like old, bad videos. As Rita gets older, the film material gets better. The two halves of the film with the two Ritas at different ages are separated by shots of an old Filipino melodrama in which Rita's grandmother acted.
An opulent film with a lot of real life by a film maker we want to follow further, just like Rita. In 2005, the film was given a Hubert Bals Fund Award during the Cinemanila Boracay Workshop. (GjZ)