Crying Ladies

is the first Filipino feature film to use the new VISION2 stock. It marks the first feature-length production for Unitel Pictures, a Philippines-based commercial production house.

	(L to R) Angel Aquino, Sharon Cuneta and Hilda Koronel.

Crying Ladies, as the title suggests, is the story of three women who, for different reasons, become professional funeral criers. Stella is an ex-prisoner struggling to gain custody of her son from her ex-husband. In order to prove that she can be a good mother with a stable job, Stella convinces her friend Doray, an ex-B-movie actress, to join her as a funeral crier. A third friend, Choleng, joins Stella and Doray in their new-found profession, after being told by a priest that an act of charity will clean her soul.

A dying tradition

First-time feature film director Mark Meily and cinematographer Lee Meily, whose previous feature film credits include Tanging Yaman and American Adobo, were attracted to the project’s issues of maternal love, cultural assimilation and the fact that funeral crying is both figuratively and literally a dying tradition. “I choose scripts that inspire me on a personal level,” confirms Lee Meily. “During pre-production, Mark and I always talk about the visual style that will best translate the emotions in the script. For Crying Ladies, we were very precise in defining how the elements of lighting, blocking and production design worked as visual cues for the emotional considerations of each scene.” Director Mark Meily adds, “it was great fun giving life to the characters. Every one of them has a back-story that guided Lee and I in the choice of colors and personal tastes for each character, even for the dead man!”