‘Sunday Beauty Queen’: Flip side of OFW loneliness  

Covering the youth-led “umbrella movement” in Hong Kong in 2014, I was struck by how gracious many of the fresh-faced Hong Kong protesters were, a far cry from the gruffness of residents I had known in previous decades.

Long-time Filipino migrant workers in the city were quick to attribute these welcome traits to being raised by Pinay yayas. Even middle-class Hong Kong families living in small apartments have long been able to hire Filipino domestic helpers.

It will probably take a long-term sociological study to truly validate these claims of yaya-inflected personality development of Hong Kong kids.

But after watching the tenderness of Pinay yayas in Hong Kong in the new non-fiction film, Sunday Beauty Queen, I’m willing to believe it. The handful of Pinays portrayed in the movie are shown at the homes of their Hong Kong employers performing a wide array of household tasks with a warmth that belies the loneliness of their condition. Living and working in cramped quarters for much lower wages than their Hong Kong counterparts, these Pinays exude a genuine love, the more visible affection shown towards their young and elderly wards.

But it is the love for their families they left back home that explains why they are in Hong Kong in the first place, revealed in such heart-breaking moments as the graduation of a child that one Pinay watches only via cell phone. Another mother in Hong Kong recalls a phone conversation where she has to tell her son that she can’t come home because she has to take care of her absent employer’s dog. Asked why she endures such hardship, one DH replies with a faint smile, “Kasi mahal ko ang pamilya ko.”

These harsh realities of OFW life have long been widely known to millions of Filipinos who have worked overseas and the families who benefit from their hard-earned remittances.

But the producers of this film build the narrative around a less known peg, the beauty pageants that OFWs stage for themselves. For many, these contests are the high points of their lives as domestics, and the rehearsals the highlights of their week. DHs are given one day off per week, usually a Sunday, when they must squeeze in a social life amid all their personal errands.

Director Baby Ruth Villarama profiles several of the contestants as they prepare each Sunday for the big event, while toiling alone the rest of the week for families who come from a vastly different culture. Villarama’s documentary is currently showing as the lone non-fiction movie in the Metro Manila Film Festival, and the first documentary in its history.

The festival organizers chose to make history by selecting a documentary that can resonate widely. Cleverly focusing on OFW beauty pageants injects the film with action, glamour, music, dance, and drama, as if to say that OFW life is not all hard-luck stories. Surprisingly, the main character is not a contestant but a doting lesbian pageant organizer named Leo who is part coach and part kuya (referred to as a he in the subtitled film) to the women who spend their only free days of the week rehearsing.

Leo, who is the rare DH who lives in his own apartment that he shares with his partner, takes viewers to Hong Kong streets enlivened by thousands of chattering and dancing Pinays. But there is also a grim visit to the Bethune House, the non-government refuge for abused Filipinas.

Perhaps more than a few viewers will hope, even expect, to see the OFWs’ family members back home humanized, reacting to their DH relative’s struggles for their sake. But they remain faceless and, except for the rare voice, invisible. It might have been an opportunity to deepen the pathos of the DH who slaves away alone for families in the homeland that receive money often without appreciating the sweat that produced it. But the story might have strayed from the yin-yang of Sunday pageants and weekday loneliness.

The gift of this documentary is what TV documentaries usually do not give viewers, which is showing change over time. The filmmakers follow its subjects for years; the value of this is poignantly revealed near the end.

“Time is truth” is a saying that values the benefits of deep research, in this case making even Hong Kong employers sympathetically human. One in particular, the elderly TV and film producer Jack Soo who employs one of the pageant contestants, speaks in heartfelt superlatives about OFWs, making his own eventual fate the film’s rawest emotional moment.

There are usually financial reasons why indie films take a long time to make. Whatever reason, documentaries like “Sunday Beauty Queen” are one genre of cinema where extended production time can enrich the story. The unexpected can happen that ends up in the film, stuff that you just can’t make up. — DVM/BM, GMA News

Sunday Beauty Queen, an entry at this year's Metro Manila Film Festival, is currently screening in cinemas. Go to the film's Facebook page for more information.