Amazing how women’s intuition works. There I was, yearning to write something about Marilou, but resisting the urge lest some people think I had joined the bandwagon, claiming to be one of her best friends which definitely I was not, when suddenly, I got this call from an editor-friend: “Ine, how would you like to write an article about Marilou?”
In her short but fruitful life, filmmaker Marilou Diaz-Abaya (1955-2012) lived and breathed music, which was also an integral part of all her films.
When we were seminarians in the mid-’80s, Fr. Roque Ferriols, SJ, told us in our Philosophy class that the Filipino translation of Ignatius of Loyola’s “Take and Receive” was inaccurate. The final line of the prayer goes, “Give me only your love and your grace, these make me rich, I ask for nothing more.”
As writer, director, teacher and diver, Marilou Diaz-Abaya has never failed to astound. On every occasion where we have had the privilege to observe her, she has always revealed something new in her persona. We come home from the book launch of her latest project, “Reefs of Paradise, a Divine Gallery,” feeling blessed, discerning a holiness, a oneness with the Superior Being we have never yet experienced especially under such circumstances.
Love, commitment. The self, comfort, material possessions. Family. Occasionally, these are put to the test. Which will endure? At what price? Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s latest film, “Ina: Ikaw ang Pag-ibig,” does not beg for obvious answers as it follows what looks like separate journeys of individuals whose lives are inexorably linked with one another. Although familial, [...]
-01-FA.jpg)