In the Navel of the Sea (Sa pusod ng dagat)
Pepito (Jomari Yllana) has been groomed since earliest childhood to take over his mother's job of delivering the babies in a remote fishing village in the Philippines. He would rather do almost any other job in the world, but family tradition dictates that he must honour the wish of his mother.
Marilou Diaz-Abaya's new film looks at gender roles and generational conflict in Filipino society by focusing on the awkward but intimate relationship between a mother and her son.
Diaz-Abaya, born in 1955, is a prolific filmmaker. Since graduating from the London International Film School in the late 1970s, she has made 15 feature films. Throughout her career, she has explored the plight of women in the Philippines. Brutal (1980) was about a young wife abused by her husband. The Eleventh Commandment (1994) also examined domestic violence. In The Navel of the Sea can be seen as a companion piece to her 1996 film, Madonna and Child, which charts the unlikely friendship between a Filipina maid who has lost track of her son and a young orphan.
Geoffrey Macnab
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