Is "BarDa" the magic word to dispel the seeming hex that caused a prolonged drought in the moviehouses for Pinoy films?
To the un-initiated, we’ll tell you that “BarDa” stands for the love team of bubbly actor Barbie Forteza and the typically laconic cager-turned-actor David Licaoco. The couple practically mesmerized GMA-7 viewers two years ago when they portrayed fancifully created sweethearts in the networks re-imagining of the novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo into one TV series of the magic realism kind dubbed as Maria Clara at Ibarra.
No, they did not portray the title characters. Since Maria Clara and Ibarra are characters created by our National Hero Jose Rizal, the writers felt free about inventing two characters in the TV series named Klay and Fidel. The viewers lapped up the romance that germinated between the haughty elitist Fidel of the 19th century and the loquacious Nursing student of the 21st century Klay (who was nationalistic). The fictive lovers soon got to be known as “BarDa.”
The Kapuso network didn’t hear sounds of success in the movies from BarDa so the company just made the couple the stars of another mini-series Maging Sino Ka Man, inspired by a money-making movie starring Sharon Cuneta and Robin Padilla (who probably had no idea yet at that time that he would become a popular senator).
BarDa now stars in a romcom film curiously titled That Kind of Love. It’s definitely sweet of GMA 7 to have allowed the loveteam to do their first film together not with GMA Films but with the independent company Pocket Media Productions. It’s only the third feature film of one Catherine Camarillo who rose from the ranks of assistant directors at ABS-CBN.
In person this Camarillo is as lady-like as her first name, which is that of a saint and some empresses in the olden days. She does look like she has the grace to dispell a hex, if there can be one, indeed.
(She actually has the physical beauty, too, even now that all her children are grown up.)
Camarillo helmed the movie Chances Are, You and I, which was shown just about a month ago but was actually made in late 2022. It starred Kira Balinger and Kelvin Miranda. Many thought it was Camarillo’s debut as film director.
It wasn’t. Her first was one top-billed by Piolo Pascual, an indie “nutritiously” titled Chopsuey. Released in theaters in 2007 (yes, that long ago!) Pascual was already nicknamed “Papa P” at that time and had been paired in five movies with Judy Ann Santos, the last one being Don’t Give Up on Us (2006), with Camarillo as assistant director to Joyce Bernal. Publicity yarn about Chopsuey had it that Pascual became a close friend of Camarillo (already married and with children at that time) and Pascual promised her that he would appear in whatever film she would do as full-fledged director. And she did one the next year. The film was Chopsuey, which also starred Dimples Romana and Andrea del Rosario.
There was no follow-up directorial job for her in the movies and even on television. By 2009 though, Camarillo got employed as assistant director in a long string of TV series on ABS-CBN, starting with the very positive and practically religious May Bukas Pa in which child actor Zaijian Jaranillo played the central character.
In 2016, she began to be tasked as director of episodes of the legal stories anthology Ipaglaban Mo. From a hit series (May Bukas Pa) to sporadic episodes in an anthology seems like a demotion.
But ABS-CBN management must have recognize her patience and resilience as a director, so the next year, 2017, she was given a series that sizzled for a year. It was Wild Flower, with Maja Salvador top-biling the series, supported by sultry women actors. This was followed by Halik, a series bannered by Jericho Rosales in 2018 and which ran all the way to 2019.
Her TV assignments slowed down in the middle of 2019 because the company was about ready to switch her into directing films. She has been with the company for 10 years. It seems just the right time for her to be promoted to directing movies for ABS-CBN’s Star Cinema perhaps to catch up with the company’s other women bigshots, such as her namesake Cathy Garcia (who later become a Molina, and then get widowed, then married a Sampana last year).
Inside ABS-CBN, Camarillo goes by the nickname “CC,” her initials. It seems she couldn’t be addressed “Cathy” — because there was a well-known Cathy there even before Camarillo came along.
Cathy Garcia joined ABS-CBN also as assistant director for some TV shows but started to get assigned to direct films in 2004. Among her first was the trilogy Bcuz of You, as one of its directors. By 2007, she had begun to be assigned to direct a string of Bea Alonzo-John Lloyd romcoms all of which became hits, including One More Chance which was recently turned into a musical by PETA.
Actually, aside from Camarillo getting assigned to Joyce Bernal as assistant director, Camarillo was eventually assigned for the same task in some Star Cinema outputs of Laurice Guillen and Chito Roño. But she was never assigned to Sampana in any capacity.
At the sidelines of the recent media conference for That Kind of Love at Valencia Events in QC, we dared ask Camarillo about why she was never made to work with Sampana.
The UP Diliman graduate in Journalism plainly replied: “I really don’t know why. It could be because she is older than me and we did not start at the same time to work with ABS-CBN.”
In mid-2019, months before the Covid-19 pandemic came along in 2020, ABS-CBN made Camarillo sign a contract for five movies as director. “No one saw the pandemic coming. It’s as if it just fell from nowhere, and slowed down life for all. It was worse for ABS-CBN: its broadcast franchise wasn’t renewed,” she stoically recalled.
So the contract for five movies wasn’t put into effect. She didn’t howl. She wouldn’t allow the creative spirit within her wilt and die. She eventually put up a production house funded by her earnings and those of her very gainfully employed OFW husband, a Camarillo (Orfinada is the lady director’s maiden surname.) The company was modestly named Pocket Media Productions. After some non-movie projects, she and her daughter decided to go full-blast into movie production. The daughter is the scriptwriter of both Chances Are, You and I and That Kind of Love. She uses the name Elisse Catrina. She’s also a production executive of Pocket Media.
In That Kind of Love, Licauco plays Adam, a super-rich bachelor who can’t find a girlfriend he can be serious with. Forteza is Mila, a psychologist and love coach whom Adam will turn to for help.
This is a story of the rich and glamorous and not afraid to show off and splurge. That kind of life splashed on the Pinoy screen in the moviehouses might dispell the hex.
If it isn’t this one, Camarillo has already shot another film to entice Pinoys to swarm back to the theaters the way they used to do. It stars Rhian Ramos. Our own hexing didn’t dispell Camarillo to reveal more details.
