Petty criminals Rosa and Dado keep half a dozen schemes juggling in the air, but their main source of income are the smuggling and housebreaking operations led by a local crime boss and his right-hand man Lupo. A busy life, complicated even further by Enteng, Rosa's son, an incurable gambler and thief, and Rosa's blind mother Lola. Dado worries about Jing, his former girlfriend, now married to another man, and her daughter Iris June.
Rono miraculously keeps it all airborne, juggling eccentric characters and fast-breaking situations with masterly ease. More, something emerges - a distinct point of view, a small-scale vision of Manila's urban streetlife that manages to be both cynical and compassionate at the same time. The film's milieu is quietly, consistently realistic, made so by patient accumulation of detail: detail you feel the filmmakers have gathered through long observation and careful research.
The cast is as terrific as anything you might ask for. Diether Ocampo shows no trace of his former pretty-boy image; his Dado is taciturn and intense, yet strangely passive. Rosanna Roces has always been more of a smart-n-sexy personality than an actress; here she's grittier, edgier, hiding a more desperate vulnerability totally unlike her wisecracking sexpot persona. She holds the film together with a complex, fully realized performance that goes beyond anything she's ever done before.
Lao is possibly the most underrated scriptwriter in the local film industry today. Rono gives ROSA its visual style and helped create the remarkable ensemble acting, but the characters and their fleshed-out relationships, the story and overall vision are uniquely Lao's. He deserves credit for being, at the very least, a full and equal collaborator in one of the better Filipino films to come out this year.
Noel Vera