Vivamax: Review of BATA PA SI SABEL (2022): Revenge for Rape

December 6, 2022

On their honeymoon night, Sabel (Micaella Raz) and her new husband Bryan (Benz Sangalang) were attacked in their beach-side cottage by the mayor's son Jethro (JC Tan) and his two minions Marvin (Rash Flores) and Alex (Chad Solano). The intruders brutally raped Sabel in succession while Bryan helplessly watched in anguish. They then mortally wounded the couple when they tried to fight back, and dumped their bodies into the ocean. 

Jethro's lifeless body was found and caused alarm in the community. Sabel's mother Isabelle (Katya Santos) asked the Mayor Sonny Banzon (Gardo Versoza) and his wife Elvie (Irma Alegre) for help looking for her missing body. Meanwhile, Sabel was washed up on the shore of a remote island still alive. She was found by a local recluse, an ex-soldier Nestor (Julio Diaz), who nursed her back to health and trained her for revenge. 

This is already the third film that carried the provocative title "Bata Pa Si Sabel." The first was a 1976 bold film by Santi Verchez, which launched the career of Carmen Ronda as an innocent virgin lusted over by older men (Eddie Garcia, Paquito Diaz and Vic Silayan). The second was a 1981 film by Joey Gosiengfiao, which was the first mature role of Snooky Serna as a young girl torn between two suitors (Albert Martinez and Joel Alano). 

This third film has the same title, but the story being told was that of another classic Filipino film by Lino Brocka, "Angela Markado" (1980), starring Hilda Koronel as a rape victim to took justice in her own hands. "Angela" already had a recent remake of its own in 2015 starring Andi Eigenmann, but this year, Brillante Mendoza decided to write his own version, but again delegating the directing job to his screenplay writer Reynold Giba. 

When you see the "Sabel" turn bloody red in the title card, you knew it was going to follow the usual Vivamax sex-violence formula, and it did. Giba had a camera that was unsteady and in constant motion, much like his mentor Mendoza, but not as shaky or dizzying. During the sex scenes, random body parts and prosthetics were being brazenly being exposed to titillate. Level of acting of everyone in the cast was in the usual Vivamax mold, no major star-making turns here. Over-extended scenes, not true substance, stretched this past 2 hours. 4/10.