In 'Sisa,' Every Woman Wants Her Pound of Flesh

FROM THE FIRST FEW MOMENTS of Sisa, we understand that we’re treading outside of Jose Rizal’s pages. The ‘baliw’ we’re seeing on screen is neither defenseless nor downtrodden; she is cunning and duplicitous, and she will throw dirt in a colonizer’s eye. In fact, in the film, director Jun Robles Lana likes to frame her like a painter would any mythic subject: outsized and hyperimposed, a rumble of clouds whirring behind her. Lana’s pitch is a film where women aren’t reduced to mere symbols for the violence that occurs around them, and he posits that the best place to start with is Rizal’s most tragic character.