July 22, 2022
Elise (Cloe Barretto) is the kept woman of prominent businessman Christian Lopez (Karl Medina). She still had to work as a high-class escort on the side to sustain her high lifestyle. Her mother Nora (Jaclyn Jose) introduced her to the skin trade at age 11 and had been living off Elise's efforts since then to support her own gambling habits.
Elise's comfortable routine began to unravel when Christian found out about her daily affairs and confronted her about it. What began as a desperate move for self-preservation set off a series of violent events that began to spiral out of control. Elise desperately sought the help of old high school boyfriend Marcus (JC Santos), but things may already be too late.
With its sad story of a masochistic prostitute and her predatory mother, Bobby Bonifacio Jr.'s "Tahan" joined the long list of lurid Vivamax tales of sex and violence. The script was written by Quinn Carillo, who also appeared onscreen as Elise's friend Michelle. I commend her ironic choice of title ("tahan" being a word a mother lovingly used to calm her crying baby) and her gumption to draw inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock himself, as it had "Psycho" all over it.
To fulfill the film's sex quota, it opens with a sequence of Elise romancing a society matron (Mercedes Cabral). She also had a leery scene with an old pervert customer (Francis Mata). To unwind, Elise picked up different men every night, including a random young man Dennis (Jet Delgado) and a macho dancer Neil (AJ Oteyza). Through all this, Cloe Barretto felt like she was lifelessly going through empty motions, no energy at all on her face or body.
Once the violence took over, it went totally off the rails as the screen became a veritable blood bath. When mother told the junk shop to "chop-chop" a car to unrecognizable pieces, she also had her own "chop-chopping" to do. In one particularly messy scene, a bag of internal organs spill on the ground, mother was there to pick up the bloody slop. Truly, only a Ms. Jaclyn Jose can pull off such sleaze and still come out with class. 3/10.
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