Jun Robles Lana’s Your Mother’s Son serves as the opening film of the EnlighTEN: The IdeaFirst Film Festival, which is slated to on 12 to 14 April at the Gateway 2 Cineplex 18 in Cubao, Quezon City.

The EnlighTEN: The IdeaFirst Film Festival features majority of the best films produced by the company on its 10 years of existence.

During the special press screening, Lana’s motion picture Your Mother’s Son, in a nutshell, centers on a single parent, Sarah (Sue Prado), and her resolve to survive at the height of the pandemic. The schoolteacher conducts online classes and sells delicacies to literally and figuratively go on living and make ends meet.

Her son, Emman (Kokoy de Santos), has just ended his contractual employment. Fiercely protective of his mother, he gets anxious and, at times, borders on a jealous streak — when he sees and senses any man who takes an interest, romantic or the sexual kind, in his mother.

Adding more emotional baggage and complication to Emman’s personality are Amy (Elora Españo), less than lovers but more than friends with sexual benefits, and the arrival of Oliver (Miggy Jimenez), a student who becomes a house guest with a history of being saved by his mother from an abusive father. 

As the four characters slow dance and waltz their way to one another, masks are taken off, pleasure and pain mark the one who dominates and submits, as an amoral and moral unwinnable war brews and burns, and Sarah, Amy, Oliver and Emman turn callous and clueless on how they end up ­­— either as victims or victors of their choices and circumstance exacerbated by love, loins and reason that are on a collision course.

The narrative written by Lana and Elmer Gatchalian shocks, especially its depiction of power play, the kind of power employed by Sarah to gain control, manipulate and abuse. The people under her spell and in her web have become playthings for her, coveting more pleasure and that kind of bliss and contentment that comes from the rapture of the loins.

This cautionary tale shows the wisdom of the aged sayings: “Lahat ng masarap, bawal (All that are pleasurable, forbidden)” and “Lahat ng sobra, nakakasama (Everything in excess is harmful).” Anything and everything that becomes extremely indulgent, most especially love that consumes and makes the cookie crumble, comes with a dear price. It drives a person to lose his soul and sell it to the devil. As the dark side consumes, the burning desire, its titillating slow burn concludes like a Grecian, Shakespearean or a tabloid front-page story kind of tragedy.

Adding more potency and power, plus that lump in the throat and heavy feeling on the chest, are the emotionally committed, sincere and vulnerable infusions that Prado, De Santos, Españo and Jimenez give to their respective characters.

How they add truth to every tick and throb, tempers and twists of Sarah, Emman, Amy and Oliver are testaments indeed to them being the new hopes and forces of acting in Philippine cinema.

Your Mother’s Son dares to shake the status quo wants us to reflect on the present tense and times. It rages forward to not only shake off, but break the prevailing apathy that makes us all look the other way and accept that there are just some things we can no longer change, so might as well just bear and endure it as part and parcel of the life we have on this crazy planet.

The EnlighTEN: IdeaFirst Film Festival

Aside from Your Mother’s Son, what lovers of Pinoy movies can expect from the EnlighTen Film Festival is IdeaFirst Company’s celebration of a decade of bringing stories to light through the films they have made that will be screened in the film festival. 

Expect a roster of award-winning and thought-provoking motion pictures for the public’s viewing consumption and satisfaction.

Adding more premium to the festival, The IdeaFirst Company’s Perci Intalan said: “Aside from the films, those who will join can look forward to engaging in ‘Behind the Idea’ Q&A sessions in selected film showings, wherein directors and some cast members are in attendance; enlightening Jun Robles Lana Masterclasses; and Directors and Writers Roundtable Discussions.”

Intalan added in conclusion: “We designed these other offerings to give our audiences, believers and supporters of the films we make a comprehensive understanding of the creative process behind the films.”