Fresh off the box office hit ‘The Loved One,’ screenwriter and director Irene Emma Villamor returns with her latest offering, ‘Midnight Girls,’ starring Jodi Sta. Maria, Sanya Lopez, Jane Oineza, and Loisa Andalio. The film is a huge departure for Villamor, whose filmography is rife with stories revolving around the complex nature of love. From ‘Camp Sawi’ to ‘The Loved One,’ Villamor had always looked at the price of romance-especially in films like ‘Sid and Aya: Not a Love Story,’ ‘Ikaw at Ako at ang Ending,’ and ‘The Loved One’-where she argues that economics, politics, and society are of vital consequence to love and being in love.
‘Midnight Girls’ strays away from the central themes in most of Villamor’s filmography as she sets her camera on the bonds of sisterhood formed in a small community of Filipina hostesses in Japan. It’s an OFW story that centers on a different kind of love-that of family, both chosen and by blood.
Discussed, implied, but never shown
The four actresses represent the different struggles of the Filipina OFW in an exploitative industry. Sta. Maria’s Vicky has left her son in the Philippines and only communicates with him via video call on the phone. She provides for him, her grandmother, and other family members. Lopez plays Paris, who must navigate the difficulties of falling in love with a native, who may take her off her path. Meanwhile, Oineza plays Saki, who is struggling with the nature of the work while confused about her own gender identity.
And Andalio plays the latest arrival, Wanna, who is taken under the wing of the three older women and learns about the hardships of the work.
These hostesses, more popularly known as ‘japayuki’ (though I’m wary of using the term), work in bars and serve as companions for locals and tourists-mostly the former-and entertain them, getting them to order more drinks in exchange for large tips.
The film tells us that the clients have a ‘no touch’ policy, but we see it broken over and over as the girls and their patrons get comfy, seated beside each other and sharing drinks. This is Villamor’s approach to the story-the exploitation is discussed, implied, but never shown. But what is in full view here is the women’s humanity: The moments are spent showing them endure and persevere through their work-often questioned by people around them, and even sometimes themselves-and anchoring the narrative on why they do what they have to do.
Villamor is working hard to give these girls dignity and agency, presenting the film as a slice-of-life, rather than a plot-driven story. She carefully builds these women’s stories and amplifies the bonds that are formed from sharing these struggles.
Loisa andalo
Loisa Andalo in ‘Midnight Girls’
Immersing in the world
During a special screening leading up to the film’s opening in May, I had a chance to talk to Villamor about the film. She told me that they had spent a lot of time in Nagoya, Japan, interviewing the hostesses to gather their stories.
‘We were able to build other stories,’ she tells me, ‘and we gave them all to the producers-and this is what they chose. I was so happy it was this one that they gave the go signal to.’ She was happy because they chose the ensemble piece, which is something she really wanted to do. She calls out Marilou Diaz Abaya’s ‘Moral’ as her inspiration, and I can see it in the narrative structure and its elements.
When asked if it was hard shifting her lens to a different kind of story, Villamor says, ‘Yes! Kasi hindi siya ‘yung comfort zone ko-‘yung love story-at nakaka-challenge kasi nag-iisip pa rin ako ng panibagong love story.’
And this time, the focus is on love for family and the bonds of sisterhood. She claims that she had asked the universe for the chance to exercise her directing skills in another genre-and she truly was able to.
Women with agency
When I tell her about how the film never felt exploitative to me, she shares an anecdote about coming home after the one-month shoot-several days of immersion for the cast, 13 days of shooting-and where, during editing, she realized that the film had no sex scenes or scenes of abuse or the exploitation that is talked about by the characters.
‘Tama ba ‘yung ginawa ko?’ she questions, but because of the absence, the film now begins a dialogue with so many other previous Filipino films about OFW workers and the abuse and exploitation that they have received in their work. The absence is instantly filled by our own collective imagination of all the things we’ve seen on the news, on social media, and all the prior films that came before. ‘Midnight Girls’ ends up presenting us with the other side of the story.
Lopez, during the talk back, shared that this film does not present these women as victims. She emphasizes that the women are portrayed with agency, which elevates them from the usual representation.
Immersing themselves in the role
Sta, Maria reveals that she had studied extensively in preparation for the role-read articles and books on transnationalism and really engaged with the women whose lives were the basis for the characters on screen-and she adds that the women were present during filming, guiding them through the entire shoot so they could really represent them as accurately as possible.
They even had a translator on set, and the actors had to learn to speak Nihonggo for their scenes-most challenging for Sta. Maria, Lopez, and Oineza-as their characters have been living them for many years, and the delivery had to represent that.
But after all that practice, the moment the scene is done and they move off to the next, both Sta Maria and Lopez admit that they forgot the lines immediately.
A different kind of OFW story
Shot entirely in Nagoya, Japan, ‘Midnight Girls’ takes the expectations that are attached to the Filipina hostess in Japan and turns them on their head.
It never judges its characters-no matter how hard some characters judge them-but seeks to identify the social structure of the system that demands these kinds of sacrifices to be made. This is something that drew Sta Maria to the project-about how the film implicates how our own society and government have made these efforts necessary, by splitting families apart and building new homes in foreign lands.
The spectacle in the film is not the exploitation or the abuse but the bonds of the chosen family that help keep these women afloat. While the film has its dramatic moments, the most visually striking images are of how these women keep themselves together through the toughest events possible and the eventual reveal of their vulnerability.