Closer to Home

Starring:Arthur J. Nascarella, Jack P. Mclaughlin, James Lorinz, Ralph Buckley, Ric Sanchez, Carmelita FernÃ¡ndez, Madeline Ortaliz, Edward Lane, Louis Giovannetti, Consolacion Gamboa, Jessmarc Sun, Joenilyn L. Malaya, Ann M. Achacoso, Jocelyn Malaya, Marc Wyler, Emigdio Al. Tagle, Barbara Blackburn, Johnwell Soriano, Leo Gamboa, Florencio Isidoro
Director: Joseph Nobile
Studio: Elibon Film Productions
Product Type: DVD

Product Description

At What Price Family? An acclaimed award-winning film featured in over 26 international film festivals in 16 countries and the critics agree: "Another Green Card Romance, but this time, the broader canvas-in both the Philippines and the US--gives the story a wider emotional range and a near epic feel." 3stars(out of 4) Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune "...bound to make heads turn and touch a lot of Filipino hearts...", Ricky Lo-The Philippine Star "...so beautifully, so convincingly and honestly presented one cannot help but be touched."--Ethel Ramos, Malaya "...rewarding juxtaposition of two cultures, two families and two interesting individuals...a new look at the Filipino-American relationship...", Nestor Torre--Philippine Daily Inquirer "...wholesome, intelligent film for the discriminating Filipino audience...we can see ourselves in the eyes of an American who loves us." --Billy Balbastro, Abante Synopsis: Dalisay journeys from the Philippine countryside to New York City to marry an ex-merchant marine. Dean hopes to find love and a new family as his American family disintegrates around him, while Dalisay hopes to buy her sick sister's cure, and ultimately, a future for her debt-ridden family.

Customer Reviews:

Could've Been Better.......2006-03-09

I really enjoyed the scenes filmed in the Philippines. The American side made me think that the film's producers think that only a loser from a dysfunctional family would consider marrying a Filipina. I liked the lead character in spite of himself, but come on, hasn't he heard of introduction services on the Internet? Someone didn't do their research. But I'm glad the subject was considered, and anyone interested in marrying a Filipina might find after watching this film that the smart thing to do would be to move to the Philippines. I plan to!

Beautiful Photography in the Philippines.......2005-10-21

Filipino movies are expensive to buy and this one is no exception. It is worth the price of admission though. This movie starts out in a factory in the Philippines were a young filipino women makes her living. The factory is bright and colorful and soon we learn that the people are colorful also. But the people are poor and we soon find out the girl in the factory has a little sister that will die if they do not come up with the money for an operation. So along the way we learn that she has decided to go to america so she can earn the money for her sister.

From the factory the girl goes to a bar. We start to see the bar girls and what life is like for them. We meet the man who runs the bar. He offers her a job in Japan but she is told that from time to time she will have sex with the men. She wants to go to american so he tells her that he will help her to get a visa. Next we find out that in order to get the visa she either has to have sex with him, or she has to come up with money to pay him for his service. "Agencys" like this are common in the Philippines and we begin to see how business is done in the bars and what you can expect if you go to them for help.

Next the women goes home to talk to her parents. We really start to see what life is like in the Philippines now. Her father has two carabao and he is out in the water plowing up the ground for rice. We see the nippa hut they live in, make out of nippa or bamboo with a grass roof. We see her family and her little sister who needs the operation. Then we see as she goes with her dad to the money lenders. She needs the money to pay the agency and the first lender turns her down because he is afraid the agency will steal her money and not get her the visa to go to america. The father already owes that money lender 80% of his crop that will not come in for four more months. The second lender has no problem with his conscious, the price is 10% interest per month, to be paid each and every month, and the father must put up his house, land, and carabao to secure the loan. Even they are poor and so far in debt, they are still a happy family, that enjoys being with each other.

This is all I am going to comment on, because when she gets to american I do not think the film is very accurate on the way Filipino brides are who come to American. My wife is filipino and she was upset by this and she kept saying: "her cousin is corrupting her, the cousin is corrupting her". It is a shame that they just do not understand the Filipino women and try to show them the way that they do.

This movie could have been a epic, but they totally miss what filipino women are all about. Yes they love their family and make great sacrifice for their family. But her husband is important to her to and the family she makes for herself is important. Of course in the movie they never get married which just makes it look like she is using him and it is really a put down on asian women that they would show her the way that they do. He treats her good and love her. Most any filipino women would respond by loving him back and be happy that she has a husband who accepts her & the situation with her family.

Yes, they have family problems, she has the kind of problems that filipino familys have. He has the kind of problems that american familys have. In real life they would find a way to work it all out. I think it is a shame that this movie ends up with a sad ending and that you do not walk away from it feeling good about yourself and the world we live in. Epic movies need to show us how adversity can be overcome. That is why this movie falls way short of all it could be.

Buying into the American dream is not as easy as you think.......2005-06-09

"Closer to Home" keeps getting labeled a "green card" romance, but that is an inadequate encapsulation of what happens in this 1995 film. The person in quest of a visa to the United States is Dalisay (Madeline Ortaliz), the young daughter of a Filipino family. Her younger sister needs an operation, so Dalisay wants to go the U.S. she can work to earn enough money to pay for the surgery. To accomplish this Dalisay signs up to become a mail-order bride. Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean (John Michael Bolger), has had enough of the merchant marine and wants to have a permanent home and a family not that he is reaching middle age. The permanent home becomes his late mother's apartment, to the distress of his sister, Jan (Jane Gabbert), who was counting on selling it, and the family comes from picking Dalisay as his future bride.

The key to this film is that Dalisay and Dean are nowhere close to being together by the end of the first reel. Dalisay and her father have to explore several options to getting the money she needs for the trip, which includes dealing with loan sharks and other avenues of exploitation, and Dean is trying to keep his life together, working as a cab driver when he is not fighting with his family. The more they learn about Dean's plans, the less they like them, and by the time Dalisay shows up she is not exactly welcomed with open arms. Whatever she was thinking living in the United States would be like, this would not be it. Clearly, buying into the American dream is not as easy as you would think, whether you are an immigrant or a native son.

The portrait of the Philippines culture seems to have more depth, but that could be because the other half of the film showing a family falling apart in New York City is more familiar territory. Yet the interplay between the two cultures is at the heart of "Closer to Home," and this is one of those films that is worth watching at least one more time in order to reconsider what it all means in the end. There is a certain rawness to the film, which reinforces the gritty reality of the circumstances of the main characters. Dean is a flawed human being, quick to anger and on some level aware that he lacks the social skills necessary to make a relationship work, even one in which he pays for a willing bride. Likewise, Dalisay, is not only understandably naive about what life is going to be like in America, we are not absolutely convinced she can survive. A happy ending is not inevitable in this film because neither simply wanting the American dream nor trying to buy it assures you of success.

I understand that this movie will have more of an impact for a Filipino audience than for American viewers, but there is still considerable resonance from the latter perspective as well. This is due primarily to Bolger's performance, because we want Dean to achieve his dream if for no other reason than that endorsing it for him endorses it for everyone. Even as we are confronted with Dean's failings, our sympathies are still drawn to the character and since they are also with Dalisay and her plight a tension develops between the pair. We know that we are rooting for both of them, but does that mean we want them to end up together? This is not a predictable film, which is why calling it a "green card" romance totally misses the boat.

This movie is in English and Tagalog with English subtitles, but you have to turn on the subtitles on the DVD. I did not figure this out so I actually watched it the first time without the subtitles, which was rather interesting because I certainly understood the gist of what was going on even if the specific details regarding how Dalisay's family was going to get the money to get her Visa were beyond my understanding. I have seen a couple of films where the two main characters only speak their native tongues without subtitles for the "other" language (i.e., the non-English one), and I just assumed "Closer to Home" was another such film.

Close to a masterpiece.......2005-05-10

Much of the effectiveness of this deeply affecting and ultimately tragic film is due to what is not shown and what is not said.

Dalisay (Madeline Ortaliz) is a young and pretty Filipino girl who--perhaps among other strategies--puts herself up as a mail order bride in order to get to America to make money to help her family and get medical help for her younger sister who has a heart condition. Maybe that is her motivation. What makes this movie so beguiling and intriguing is the ambiguous nature of Dalisay's desire. She is a "good girl, a proper girl but...(I am reminded of an old song)...one of the roving kind."

She tells her family that she will work in America and send them money. She doesn't tell them that she is a mail order bride. This is the essential duplicity that Dalisay enters into. She has a cousin in America who will help her with the details. Perhaps this is planned. We really don't know. Perhaps she is waiting until she sees her intended and will play it by ear from there. Again, the ambiguity of her desire--and indeed the ambiguity of anyone's desire, especially that of a young girl from a poor rural family in a poor country who has been making her living sewing clothes in a sweat shop--is what intrigues us. No one's motives are completely pristine. There is always an element of self-service involved, even in the most humanitarian ventures, even if it is only that of being the one who is doing good. Dalisay is being good, but one gets the sense as the film develops that she is being good partially for Dalisay. She has seen what it is like to work in a sweat shop and she has seen what happens to the girls who give their bodies away. She is wiser than that. She has a plan.

Director Joseph Nobile who co-wrote the script with Ruben Arthur Nicdao overplays the idyllic rural setting in the early scenes--the good father and family, their hard work, the happy, if poor, children, the bright and ambitious daughter in whom they believe. They are of course preyed upon by middle men and money lenders, but they hold their heads high. I think Nobile would have been wise to cut out about half of these opening sequences in the Philippines because they are too cloying, they too much recall the cliches of the good and noble peasants being used by the evil power structure.

However, there is something to be said for the build up. We do see that although Dalisay brings gifts to her siblings when she visits, and she seems delighted to see the children run alongside the bus, there is some restraint in her affection, some slight distance from the little ones and from her father and mother. The family affection, although seemingly demonstrated, struck me as lukewarm. Perhaps that was the intent so as to account for Dalisay's leaving them.

The film begins slowly. I would have given up on it had I not known of the film's reputation. I stayed with it and I am glad I did because once Dalisay gets to America about halfway through, the story becomes riveting and develops into a powerful tragedy of conflicting desires, told in stark realism and beautifully acted by Ortaliz and John Michael Bolger who plays Dean.

He is one of live's pathetic losers who has a dream, an island girl of his own, to love him and to serve him and to be his wife and constitute the loving family that he doesn't have. Ah, but the intrusion of reality! We see that although Dalisay is good and non-exploitive herself, she has her own dreams and they are not likely to include an over-the-hill, broken-down and drunken cabbie, a guy with a dysfunctional family, a guy who can't keep a job and wears too much cologne. When he says he loves her we know there is no way she can say she loves him.

An important scene that foreshadows the end catches Dalisay and her cousin Tess at the kitchen table in the apartment. They are joking in Tagalog about Dean's physical attributes. We can see how cozy they are, the two women in their shared culture, and how alien Dean is as he comes upon them and doesn't understand what they are saying. Ultimately we feel sorry for Dean. We pity him. Yet we understand and appreciate Dalisay's decision. She does what she has to do, and she does it with dignity and honor.

A final point: When Dean is seen crying near the end, we the viewers know why he is crying, but his family does not. For the audience the tears are ambiguous and his tragedy is twofold, just as Dalisay's motivations are ambiguous and twofold.

This is very close to masterpiece. It is original and faithfully done without choosing sides or assigning blame one way or the other. Like a Greek tragedy, the end is fated and due to human frailty rather than any conscious iniquity.

An Original Story Told From Two Very Different Angles..........2005-05-02

There is a growing business of mail order brides where companies advertise women to men who seek a life partner. The film Close to Home turns out to be a rather intriguing tale of a mail order bride, as it thoroughly depicts both sides of the issue. The story displays the man, Dean (John Michael Bolger), who seeks a woman and his status in society while the audience gets to explore the woman's socioeconomic position. Initially, it seems as if Dean seeks someone out of his league, as he seeks someone beautiful, younger and obedient. Through the mail order bride service Dean finds such a woman, Dalisay (Madeline Ortaliz), while thumbing through a large a quantity of photos. According to Dean, Dalisay does not look like a bar girl, as she seems to be young, pretty and neat.

Dalisay seeks an opportunity for a better financial life, as she desires to advance on the social ladder for her family's sake. As the film unfolds the audience will find out that the street smart Dalisay is from a poor family and her sister is in dire need to have a surgery in order to save her life. The writer and director Joseph Nobile adds extra layers of human complexity to the film by presenting these problems that she has at home and at work to explains why she is willing to get married to a stranger. Through Dalisay's problems the audience will experience a thoughtful story that will have genuine emotions, as her and her family's socioeconomic status provides a strong enough argument for why she is deciding to travel to United States.

Dean, on the other hand, is a broke dreamy romantic that seems to believe that marrying a woman and moving into the family apartment will solve all his problems. The dreamy hopes that Dean has for the future do not rest within a well thought out and organized plan, as he merely seems to believe that a woman will remove all of his problems, while his sister wants to sell the apartment where he lives to their brother-in-law. Yet, Dean does not want to sell, or cooperate with the family, as he wanders down his own path of self-destruction. This part of the film sometimes borderlines with soap opera-like melodrama, as Dean appears too simplistic in contrast to Dalisay. The contrasts will be boosted when Dalisay arrives to the United States, as her personal strength for survival makes Dean simply look like a loser.

Closer to Home has a strong foundation, as it offers an original story told from two very different angles. The allocated shooting budget should also be taken into consideration, as it was far less than any big blockbuster. Nonetheless, the Achilles' heel of the film seems to rest within the cast, as some characters provide a solid performance while others do not seem to be in character. This definitely hurts the strong message that the film tries to deliver, as it removes the attention from the story and instead directs it toward the flaws. Yet, some cinematic highlights such as when Dalisay walks on glass provide occasional cinematic inspiration of genius while the content provides some intriguing contemplation.

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