Pamilya Ordinaryo is a heartbreaking sketch of a Philippine reality.

If you are well aware of this reality

already, then this movie serves as a reminder that things are getting worse. If you are aware but
uninformed, then this film will disturb you. If you are neither aware nor informed, then this will move
you to tears; if it doesn’t, melt your heart with compassion. Here are five realities portrayed in the film
that will make you wince:

WARNING: May contain spoilers.

Reality #1: There are many illiterate and homeless children in the country.

Street life

© Screenshot from the film’s trailer

Yes there are many homeless kids out there. You can see them roaming around the streets, sleeping on
the sidewalks, knocking on your car window, or begging for food or coins as you pass by. They live on
the streets and their life is on the streets. Most of them do not know how to read or write. And you can
expect that their sentences are marred with foul words. Pamilya Ordinaryo gives you exactly that
picture. No sugar coating. It is as we see it happening in reality.

Reality #2: There are a lot of teenage parents these days and children born out of wedlock.

Pamilya Ordinaryo 01

© Screenshot from the film’s trailer

It is no secret that there is a higher rate of teenage pregnancy than before. There are moms as young as
sixteen raising children born out of wedlock. Even worse is the fact that it is rampant in all classes – rich,
middle class, and poor. The upper classes have the means to sufficiently provide for the kid. But what
about those people living on the streets like Jane? We know it is a lot worse for them and their children.

Reality #3: The weak and poor are often taken advantage of.

© Screenshot from the film's trailer

© Screenshot from the film’s trailer

It was annoying to see how the police, who are supposed to help, serve, and protect people, abuse the
poor and the powerless in this film. It will make you shake your head in anger and frustration. But we
know that it happens. Pamilya Ordinaryo gives viewers a glimpse of this reality when Jane came to the
police for aid in searching for her baby. The police did help her but for the price of her dignity.

Reality #4: Most of the time, we are more selfish than selfless.

In this film, there is a thin line between selfishness and selflessness. Probably when Aries and Jane were
pilfering so they have food to eat, it looks very selfish. But when they start doing that so they can find
and get their baby back, do you think it is still a selfish act?

© Image from the Facebook page of Director Eduardo Roy Jr.

© Image from the Facebook page of Director Eduardo Roy Jr.

Pamilya Ordinaryo paints a picture of how a seemingly selfless act can turn out to be a selfish one.
People were helping them because they will gain something out of it. For the radio and TV stations, it
was good press. For others, it was money and pleasure. In the end, there are only a handful of people
who will help without expecting anything in return.

Reality #5: A good mother will do everything to get her child back.

Losing a child is a real heartbreaker for any mother. In this film, there were two moms that were
depicted, Jane’s mother and Jane herself. Jane’s mom is one of those mothers who care more for their
vices than their kid. It was the reason that Jane opted to live on the streets.

Jane 01

© Screenshot from the film’s trailer

Jane, on the other hand, though a teenage mother, sets an example of what it is like to be a good
mother. She will do everything to get her child back. Of course, I do not agree with all her actions, but
her love for her child motivates and compels her to act. She was duped, maligned, and taken advantage
of, but she kept going and looking for her baby, Arjan.
Among all the three full length films I watched during the Cinemalaya Film Festival, this affected me the
most. It didn’t bring me to tears, but it broke my heart over and over again as I was watching it. It
deserved the four awards it garnered in the Full-Length Feature Film category: Netpac prize, Best full-
length feature film, Best Director: Eduardo Roy Jr, and Best Actress: Hasmine Killip.

Perhaps, this film is one of those that I will not easily forget. Particularly this question Aries Ordinaryo
posited to Jane: “Paano kung okay ang buhay ni baby Arjan doon sa pamilya na iyon. Maaalagaan siya
maigi, maibibigay ang mga bagay na hindi natin kayang ibigay, kukunin mo pa ba siya?”

If you were in their shoes, what would you do?

Read more: https://pop.inquirer.net/24645/5-disturbing-realities-that-will-make-you-cringe-in-pamilya-

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Binging During Quarantine: Pamilya Ordinaryo
July 30, 2020

By Stefano Ortiz
 
This week’s Binging During Quarantine review is Eduardo Roy Jr.’s 2016 film Pamilya
Ordinaryo which was recently made available on Netflix for streaming. Upon its release,
Pamilya Ordinaryo received critical praise and won numerous awards, from local and
international film festivals alike. The film participated in FDCP’s Cine Lokal 2017 and
also screened at the 2016 edition of the Cinemalaya Film Festival and Venice Film
Festival among others.
 
FDCP Chairperson and CEO Liza Dino recently spoke about Pamilya Ordinaryo’s
inclusion into Netflix and said “we are especially excited about the inclusion of…the
multi-awarded 2016 film 'Pamilya Ordinaryo' ('Ordinary People') which is one of our
Cine Lokal hits when it screened in theaters and a winner in Venice Days of the Venice
International Film Festival.” She continued “This growing slate of Filipino content on
Netflix is a true reflection of the diversity of what Philippine Cinema has to offer. And
Netflix giving space to more Filipino films is an affirmation that the Philippines has the
potential of globalizing its local market."
 

 
Pamilya Ordinaryo (2016)
Directed by Eduardo Roy Jr.
Available on Netflix
 
Pamilya Ordinaryo tells the story of a teenage couple, 16 year-old Jane (Hasmin Kilip)
and 17 year-old Aries (Ronwaldo Martin), who live on the street and have a newborn
baby. The opening scenes paint a matter-of-fact picture of their daily lives. In these
early scenes, the youth of the two protagonists truly hits home, particularly when we see
them in petty arguments ending with emotional outbursts against each other. 
 
In their poverty, they find the necessary ways to survive. With the idea of “diskarte,” in
mind, Aries and Jane do whatever they can to make whatever bit of money they can. In
their situation this means Aries stealing a phone from a foreigner in a taxi while Jane
sells it to smuggled phone vendors. It’s what happens in between the stealing and the
selling, though, that is interesting and gives us a look into the tragedy of this story: with
the stolen phone, Jane goes and takes pictures—selfies with her baby and her partner,
and gets them printed out as a memory. In another more fortunate life, they would be
another sweet teenage couple posting pictures on social media. Instead, they live on
the street, making a living in a dangerous situation.
 
The narrative gets going when someone kidnaps their baby. This disaster brings the
young couple to an obvious panic as they try to find their newborn child. In search of
their child, Aries and Jane seek the help of different avenues and structures. But it is in
this scenario that we see how the current systems have failed and continue to fail them.
In the first instance for example, Jane is repeatedly disregarded by the guard of the
supermarket where she lost her child, and it takes the passing support of a wealthier
older woman to even file a complaint. 
 
 
Meanwhile, they go to the police, the local barangay chairman, a radio station and a
national television channel, each seeking their help. But every path continues to fail
them. The police, for instance, take advantage of Jane, a powerless young woman, and
sexually abuse her. Each of these paths, in their own way, reveal how blatant
corruption, systemic incompetence, and flat-out misfortune derail or hinder support to
the most powerless of Philippine society. 
 
Along the way, individuals give support to the young couple through random acts of
giving money. But their situation shows how little such forms of support actually provide.
With a thousand pesos or five hundred pesos here or there, they can continue their
struggle for survival. But such assistance provides no qualitative change. The young
couple merely persist, trying to find ways in a harsh uncaring world. 
 
From the film’s title, Pamilya Ordinaryo comes a harsh indictment: Jane and Aries are
just one of the many who have been lost, disenfranchised and ignored by the available
structures and resources. More than anything, the film’s true tragedy lies in this fact. 
That through all the difficulties displayed on-screen, Jane and Aries’ lives are thoroughly
ordinary and unspectacular. It is a grim, undeniable reality.
The synopsis of the film on Netflix reads: “Barely making a living
as pickpockets, a teenage couple in Manila resort to desperate
measures when their one-month-old child is kidnapped.” The
teenage couple, Jane and Aries, are played by Hasmine Kilip and
Ronwaldo Martin. Ordinary People is an independent drama film
written and directed by Eduardo Roy Jr., originally released in
2016 and gathering mixed reviews since then. Some commend it
for portraying a “heartbreaking reality” of poverty, while others
criticize it for employing “poverty porn” to create despair in the
viewer without offering redemption or a way of action. Another
Slumdog Millionaire is the last thing we need, but a film where
characters are not batted helplessly around the system would be a
much appreciated change.

‘Poverty porn’ is supposed to appeal to our conscience, but the

inundation of it in media today mostly only has the effect of
overwhelming us with yet more paralyzing guilt. Maybe Ordinary
People has potential to break through to people in a way that the
reality professing exposés of documentaries and journalism might
not, but it’s difficult to see how this film might be any different.

Ordinary People refused to simplify its characters, telling their

story with nuance and compassion instead. But I can’t help but
think, shouldn’t we ask for more than just the humanizing of poor
people?
One of the reviews on Letterboxd, written by Miggy Arnonobal, is
representative of many frustrations towards the film. Arnonobal
argues that Ordinary People falls into the category of poverty porn
that make you “realize just how ‘blessed’ you are and you feel a
sense of safety after watching it”. He contrasts this with
emancipatory films about poverty, which “depict the poor as active
and agents of change not just for themselves, but for their
community and society at large”.

All too often, there are stories where people don’t win, whether in
real life or in fiction. These stories are still valid and have their
place, so I don’t think films qualify as poverty porn solely because
they fail to be emancipatory. The problem with poverty porn is the
version of reality it normalizes and the power dynamic it
perpetuates. By power dynamic, I mean how it enables the viewer
to voyeuristically peers into the lives of others and feel pity while
at the same time not recognize how their own comfortable position
is what enables them to pity in the first place. Pity isn’t an emotion
that occurs between two people of equal status.

Poverty porn is any kind of media that flattens its subjects into
helpless victims to generate sympathy and extract donations. It’s a
strategy to funnel profits towards neoliberal projects of
international relief and charity. It seems innocent enough, but it
constructs the poor as people either unable or unwilling to save
themselves. It conceals how these institutions–despite being well-
meaning–are part of a system that produces poverty and exploits
people in the first place. The resulting damage is that energy is
diverted into individual short term solutions like donating to
pacify one’s own individual conscience, instead of into challenging
neoliberalism and fighting for long-term goals of social and
economic justice and systemic change instead.

It’s true that parts of Ordinary People do engage in ‘poverty porn’,

but the particular way it makes an international audience aware of
their privilege is not one of them. Multiple scenes in the film place
the viewer in a position where they must question themselves and
their own prejudices, as well as the dominant cultural narrative
that tells us that individuals are personally responsible for their
own misfortunes.

Jane and Aries are presented with neither clean records nor
saintly qualities. They steal. They’re immature teenagers. Gullible,
desperate, and often callous in the way they treat each other. It’s
not that they aren’t devoid of redeeming qualities. They steal
because otherwise they have nothing to give. In the best way they
know how, they care for Arjan and each other. It is just harder to
recognize the ways that they do, because the way they show they
care may not be explicitly familiar to us if we have not grown up in
the world that they have.

At one point, Aries asks Jane, “Don’t you want a better life for our
child?” In this simple question, the baby being kidnapped is
almost justified. Arjan was potentially sold to a rich family that
would raise it in a much comfortable life, and Aries recognizes
this. But Jane’s quiet but fierce response insists that the baby still
belongs to them regardless. “Even if they feed him on expensive
milk. Even if they wrap him in golden diapers. My baby won’t be
their baby.” The viewer is confronted with the realization that
maybe the only acceptable and just solution would not be in giving
the baby to wealthier parents, but for Jane to be able to raise her
baby in a secure life to start with.

Beyond the portrayals of Aries and Jane, the film used another
strategy to complicate stereotypes about the poor. The camera
frequently switches from CCTV footage of a crime (usually
committed by Jane and Aries) to zoom out and follow the story
outside of the frame of the surveillance camera. This complicate
the single act of their crime, as well as judgments we might have
made if we hadn’t known the events or motivations leading up to
it. It reminds us that we have a choice–to judge a crime within the
confined episode of the immediate incident, or within the
unraveling context of a larger story. By making us conscious of
how the frame only tells partial stories, it leads us to consider our
own prejudices and biases that inform whether we condemn or
identify with Jane and Aries.

In this film, initial judgments are not always incorrect, but that’s
not what the it chooses to linger on. Instead, it focuses on how
characters treat Jane and Aries based on their evaluations. After
the short movie based on the story of Jane and Aries is released,
Jane’s phone is flooded with text messages scolding them for
having had a child, being irresponsible parents. These are
accusations that some of the film’s viewers might have thought
too, but now, when it becomes clear that Jane and Aries’ desperate
to survive and find their baby is what corners them into stealing,
to make such a judgment on them seems harsh and premature.

There is another scene where Aries shouts to the man stepping off
the escalator, “do I look like a thief?” And in this case, the man
wouldn’t be wrong if he thought that. But Aries’ indignation is not
from being misidentified. It comes from shame for being judged as
such by the man, and shame for it being true. The film asks us,
despite the fact that they are pickpockets, that they don’t know or
aren’t able to present themselves in ways that we acknowledge as
‘respectable’, does it mean they deserve how they are treated?
Does it mean they deserve to have the life that they do?

In another scene, the radio show hosts hustle Aries and Jane out
of the room so they can interview a teen model, in a swift
establishment of priorities. Cash is pressed into the couples’ hands
as ‘compensation’, in a tidy move to dispose of the teenagers and
make them move along. Not long after, Jane and Aries are
interviewed for a “feature”, and they watch themselves on screen
in a sentimental exaggeration of their life. Watching this scene, it
becomes clear how media representations of the poor can distort
the truth while romanticizing poverty. To add to that, the
interviewer and her staff also lose the photos of baby Arjan that
Jane and Aries lent to them. It is a small but telling example of
how trivial and disposable the lives of poor people are regarded
when they have no power to hold anyone accountable. In this film,
the subtle ways that media institutions betray those they are
supposedly helping or ‘giving a voice’ to are revealed. The film,
self-reflexively, is aware that the production of ‘truth’ is not by
default innocent, and subjects are all too easily exploited in the
process.

The film asks you, which one are you? Are you the police officer,
the radio talk show hosts, the lady interviewing Jane and Aries
and not even compensating them, the anonymous people
messaging and scolding them for bad parenting, the well-
intentioned people pressing money into their hands and then
dashing off and moving on with life, the security guards at the gate
policing who can go in and who can’t and turning them away? Are
you the woman who simply rolled up her car window and drove
away when Jane started to cry, unwilling to deal with what seemed
like a messy situation?

If a viewer is able to recognize themselves in any of the above, it

would be difficult for them to not feel uncomfortable, or at the
very least, more aware of how indifference is not innocent but is
also a form of complicity. The film challenges the supposedly
benign generation of sympathy. It portrays what we
conventionally accept as beneficial acts as either patronizing or
ineffective. It does all this while reserving tenderness for the
characters, with empathy but without pity. It takes into account
that the ways we witness matter, and the film should be credited
for that.

And yet despite all that, Jane and Aries lost in the end. They were
exploited, scammed, dismissed, humiliated, and condescended to,
but rarely if ever were there examples of them being able to assert
agency for themselves. This was the limitation of the film. It left
viewers feeling angered at witnessing injustice, but also feeling like
there’s nothing that can be done. The ending seemed to imply,
that’s just how it is. Ultimately, the story stayed within the
boundaries of a hopeless view of reality.

It’s true that we can’t blame a film for not giving us the story that
we want. There are limitations to a medium, and the power of any
film to enact change rests in how we decided to respond to it.
Ordinary People may have failed to deliver a story that went
beyond expectations, but it told its truth as honestly as possible,
with respect and compassion for its characters. It is up to us
spectators to decide for ourselves what to do with the version of
truth it gave us, and what steps we should take to transform
ourselves into active witnesses.

Of course, regardless of the responsibility of the spectator, the

filmmaker has a responsibility as well. It’s worth keeping in
mind when Arnonobal asked, “if you were living through the
conditions that the two characters were living in, would you really
sit through two hours of that, when it is your daily reality?” As
citizens, activists, artists, or anyone trying to represent or speak
about the struggles of others, there is something to learn about
how we should take a look at ourselves and study not just our
intentions but who we are truly serving. The way we frame stories
of justice have the power to shape and assert reality, and the
stories we choose to tell matter.

Whatever this particular film did or didn’t accomplish, the mixed

reactions toward it are a signal that audiences want more than just
exposures of truth. We want to know what it’s worth. We need
films that raise the temperature of our collective awareness, but
that also contest dominant narratives instead of perpetuating
them. Film festivals and media-service providers need to start
promoting more films that fight back against despairing realities,
and we should support those that already do. There are enough
stories that concede that the world is unfair to the oppressed. We
need more stories of these people pushing against that, even if
they don’t always win, because that’s also a reality–just one we
don’t tell as much. There are stories out there where people resist
and win for themselves a fighting chance, even if it’s a slim shot in
the dark, and those are the ones we need to pay more attention to.
It’s not a happy ending we’re asking for, but a story where a little
justice is delivered.