The locked room mystery and channeling Agatha Christie have enjoyed a resurgence of late on films and television. One can point a finger at Rian Johnson and his Knives Out film franchise for jumpstarting this craze; but one can’t deny how all over the globe, producers have been green-lighting projects of this nature. So much so that it’s become a matter of what tweaking or variation on the concept is on offer to make one’s project beguiling enough.
Jun Robles Lana writes and directs Ten Little Mistresses for Amazon Prime, and there’s a lot riding on this as it’s this streaming service first foray into producing a homegrown film. To be honest, a very similar film coming from Italy can be viewed on a rival streaming service - mistresses assemble at a mansion of the tycoon who was their paramour, he inexplicably dies, and all the women assembled become murder suspects.
But leave it Jun, who directed such films as Die Beautiful, Bwakaw, and Kalel, 15; to bring our Filipino penchant for going over the top to the table, and execute a film that deftly knows it’s audience, and provides entertainment, laughs, and social commentary. The film quickly raced to the top of the Most Watched charts of Amazon Prime in this country - and that should augur well for us as Amazon ratchets up its drive for local content.
Lilith (Eugene Domingo) is the blue-eyed majordomo at the mansion of billionaire Valentin (John Arcilla). After the death of his legal wife, Valentin invites all the ten women who have figured as mistresses in his life, enticing them with gifts and a special announcement. Of course, the women are more than ready to show up, and compete, believing the biggest prize of all will be Valentin picking one of them to be his new wife.
No spoilers here, so as befits any murder mystery’s unraveling, I’ll leave it you to enjoy the twists and turns, the red herrings, and side streets that Jun’s screenplay provides. It is a smart script for the genre; not perfect, but one that knows what steps to take and when to make an ‘about face’ to keep us guessing and off-balance.
Jun obviously had fun with the cast assembled - trying to give enough back story and screen time to each of the ten mistresses. But as can be expected, there’s no such thing as equal quality screen time, and some of the mistresses will fare better in terms of recall and character’s arc development. I personally liked Pokwang and Arci Muñoz, the former for the hidden depth of her character, and the latter for being so ready to play against type and camp it up.
In fact, it’s not coincidental that I bring up the word ‘camp’. For if there a criticism to be levelled towards the film, it could be the excess of camp, and how the film feels like the dramatization and extension of a gay bar stand-up act. This may appeal to several in the audience, but for others, it can also get tiring, and one-dimensional.
The other slight flaw, can be how the social message of women empowerment seems tacked on in the final act, somewhat tone-deaf to all that had preceded this sequence.
But these are minor criticisms, for by and large, the film works, buoyed by the performance of Eugene Domingo, who definitely knows how to keep the film centered.