Foster Child (2007)

Director:

Brillante Mendoza

Writers:

Joel Jover (writer)
Ralston Jover (writer)

Release Date:

12 September 2007 (Philippines)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A drama centered on the state of foster care in the Philippines. |

Plot Keywords:

Manila Philippines | Foster Family | Children | Hotel | Shower Scene

Awards:

9 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

Cherry Pie Picache	...	Thelma
Eugene Domingo	...	Bianca
Jiro Manio	...	Yuri
Kier Segundo	...	John-John
Dan Alvaro	...	Dado
Alwyn Uytingco

Also Known As:

John John (France) [fr]
Yiothetimeno paidi (Greece) (festival title) [el]

Runtime:

Philippines:98 min

Country:

Philippines

Language:

Tagalog | English | Visayan

Color:

Color

Company:

Seiko Films

The crude business of orphan fostering and adoption

If you like or did not like the film "Kubrador", you will like or not like the early going of "Foster Child". If you are on the negative side, don't give up.

The issue I have with both films is what I call "detailism", a fascination with the minutiae of daily life. Examples from "Foster Child": A woman enters a slum with the camera following her every move, every narrow alleyway, every encounter she makes with the local residents, every bit of small talk, every word she utters, all the way to her final destination deep in the bowels of the slum. A mother prepares to give a tub bath to her child, dumps water on him, soaps, rubs, rinses, dries and applies talc with the kid peeing outside the tub somewhere along the whole proceeding. A teenager starts to prepare a meal, picks up a sauté pan, places it on the stove, cleverly pierces a small bag containing cooking oil, squeezes the bag to the last drop, picks up a can, grabs a large knife, proceeds to cut open the can top (a risky proposition but the boy is adept), pours the contents onto the pan, picks up a utensil, stirs the food, and so on. This style of cinematography gets old fairly quickly. At one point a family prepares to have dinner. I could not believe we would be forced to watch the entire dinner. To my great relief, it did not happen.

It was about the dinner scene that the director changed tack and tightened the narrative. Slowly but surely the emotional core of the story takes shape. The climatic ending forces one to reevaluate the early "detailism" and accept that some of it was painfully pertinent.

The actors are good. The woman who plays an adoption agent is the perfect Janus. Her cheery and chatty demeanor does not quite hide a crude business mindset.

Central to the story is the notion that fostering is not forever; a foster mother now, a former mother next. Overall an allegory on capitalism: the well oiled for-profit machinery of goods allocation and the disregard for the social consequences.