Have you ever loved someone so deeply that you lost yourself in the process? This unspoken question haunts every frame of Lino Brocka’s Bona, a film that forces the audience to confront the raw, often uncomfortable realities of devotion. Originally released in 1980, the film holds a mirror to a society tangled in its contradictions, its obsessions, and its relentless class struggles. This underrated Brocka masterpiece, recently rediscovered and now digitally restored, pulls us into the orbit of a young woman, the titular Bona (Nora Aunor), whose devotion to an unworthy object borders on the tragic. And by the time it abruptly cuts to black (one of the few changes from its original theatrical release), the film becomes less about what Bona gave up and more about what her journey reveals about us, her audience.
Bona opens not with a whisper but with a guttural scream, a cry from the heart of Manila that refuses to fade, much like Bona herself. Here, Brocka and cinematographer Conrado Baltazar employ a documentary-style depiction of the Traslación of the Black Nazarene, evoking the cinéma vérité that would make Jean Rouch blush. This sequence, steeped in the iconography of devotion, transitions seamlessly to another time and space, anchored by two mirrored shots of Bona. The shift signals a thematic throughline: While the film moves from the collective worship of Christ to Bona’s intimate veneration of someone unworthy of her love, the human impulse for adoration remains constant. Here, the deity is no longer divine but human, and the sacrifice is no longer redemptive — it is a naïve woman’s self-effacing devotion to an undeserving man.
Admittedly, I watched the film with no small amount of trepidation. After all, Nora Aunor’s reputation as a national treasure in Filipino cinema precedes her, and I wondered if the film could live up to its legendary status.
It did, and then some.
Aunor’s portrayal of Bona is a masterclass in nuance, revealing depths of anguish and quiet suffering without ever tipping into histrionics. Her wide, expressive eyes become a canvas for all that the character endures, making it impossible to look away. From the moment we meet her character, we already sense a quiet intensity to her that’s hard to pin down. Bona’s unassuming demeanour belies the fire beneath, one that is fully ignited when she becomes enraptured by Gardo, a small-time stuntman played with unnerving charisma by Phillip Salvador.
The film’s story is deceptively simple. What begins as infatuation quickly spirals into an all-consuming devotion, with Bona abandoning her middle-class life to shack up with Gardo and devote herself to him. Serving the latter’s every whim, Bona cooks for him, cleans for him, nurses him when he’s sick, and endures his scorn and abuse — all without asking for anything in return. What could easily have become a one-note tale of victimhood instead becomes a restrained portrait of devotion pushed to its breaking point. And Brocka, working off a screenplay by Cenen Ramones, captures a dynamic that feels both deeply specific to its cultural milieu and universally resonant, evoking a painful recognition of the lengths we go to for love — or the illusion of it.
Comparisons to Federico Fellini’s La Strada are inevitable, and not without merit. Like Fellini’s Gelsomina, Bona is drawn to a man who treats her with casual cruelty, and her devotion becomes a kind of spiritual imprisonment. But where La Strada has moments of poetic allegory, Bona starkly grounds itself in the grim realities of urban Manila. Brocka’s film feels like a slap to the face, depicting the unforgiving city where vulnerability serves as a liability and kindness is often met with exploitation. Yet, Bona’s story isn’t just an indictment of Gardo’s cruelty or her own misplaced loyalty — it’s a blistering critique of a society that enables such relationships to fester.
Moreover, Bona owes as much to Asian cinema as it does to Fellini. The film’s verisimilitude echoes the work of Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi, particularly in its portrayal of women trapped by societal expectations. Films like The Life of Oharu come to mind, where personal suffering is inseparable from the larger forces of class and gender oppression. Brocka’s Manila may be a world away from Mizoguchi’s Edo-period Japan, but the parallels are striking.
As for the technical merits of the film, what I enjoyed most is the creative marriage of Brocka’s direction and Baltazar’s cinematography. Renowned for his ability to evoke raw authenticity, Baltazar captures the squalor of Manila’s shantytowns with a visceral, almost tactile quality. His use of incandescent bulbs bathes scenes in harsh glares and deep shadows, heightening the emotional weight of moments such as Bona’s solitary vigil outside a motel door or her quiet resolve amidst domestic chaos. The cinematographer’s lens lingers on the textures of cramped interiors and the grime of urban decay, creating a visual rhythm that mirrors the young woman’s emotional turmoil. Whether showcasing the smoky, golden hues of a Manila sunset or the murky waters of a sewage canal, Baltazar’s work grounds the narrative in a palpable, lived-in reality.
Complementing Baltazar’s visuals, Brocka makes extensive use of theatrical staging. Long takes and deliberate blocking underscore the ‘pecking order’ of characters, with dominance and submission often choreographed within the frame. Baltazar’s dynamic camerawork — punctuated by slow zooms and pans — further emphasizes this, drawing viewers into Bona’s silent moments of despair and determination. These choices echo Brocka’s commitment to realism, yet Baltazar’s keen eye transforms it into something poetic and evocative.
In directing his actors, Brocka opts for tactical restraint, allowing the performances to do much of the heavy lifting. Needless to say, Aunor embodies the quiet desperation of a woman trapped in her own devotion, her every expression a study in suppressed emotion. Even in her moments of servitude, there’s a dignity to Bona that refuses to be erased, making her ultimate breaking point all the more devastating. Salvador, meanwhile, plays Gardo with a disarming charm that masks his fundamentally parasitic nature. It’s a delicate balance making us see what Bona sees in him without ever excusing his behaviour, and Salvador pulls it off with aplomb.
What’s particularly striking about Bona is how it navigates its gender dynamics. Sure, it focuses too much on the character’s suffering, which risks reducing Bona to a passive victim, thereby perpetuating a trope that has long plagued depictions of women in cinema. However, such readings overlook the agency embedded in her choices, no matter how misguided they may seem. Brocka himself doesn’t present Bona as a martyr; he instead shows her as a human being — flawed, complicated, and deeply sympathetic. Her suffering becomes integral to the film’s exploration of power, love, and self-worth, rather than gratuitous. Furthermore, Bona’s story is rooted in a time and culture that romanticised martyrdom, particularly among women. Hence, her suffering is both a personal tragedy and a cultural critique, and to demand that she behave differently is to miss the point entirely.
If there’s a criticism to be made, it should concern the film’s pacing, which I found to be at times languid. Brocka takes his time unraveling Bona’s descent, and there are moments when the narrative threatens to stall. But I would argue that this deliberate choice mirrors the character’s own stasis. She remains stuck in a cycle of servitude, unable (or unwilling) to break free. In essence, the slow pacing isn’t a flaw; it’s a feature, forcing us to sit with her and feel the weight of her choices.
Finally, while much of Brocka’s oeuvre addresses the societal and systemic underpinnings of class struggle, urban poverty, and the exploitation of the marginalized, Bona narrows its lens to a singular, deeply personal story of obsession and self-abasement. In doing so, the movie pays an almost claustrophobic attention to its titular character, deviating from the filmmaker’s usual approach of embedding his protagonists within a broader social tapestry. For instance, films like Manila in the Claws of Light or Insiang amplify their critiques of systemic inequalities by situating their leads as symbols of collective suffering or resilience. Jaguar, meanwhile, examines the compromises of morality in a corrupt society. In contrast, Bona focuses inward, into the psyche of one woman and her misplaced love. As an examination of quiet devastation, this might be a ‘smaller’ Brocka picture, but it’s no less potent.
For all its brilliance, Bona isn’t an easy film to love. It offers no catharsis, no satisfying arc of redemption or revenge. Even its ending — a shocking, ambiguous act — leaves you grasping for meaning. Without giving too much away, it’s a climax that leaves you reeling, forcing audiences to reconsider everything that came before it. It’s here that Brocka’s vision comes into full focus, revealing a filmmaker who was never afraid to confront the darkness of the human condition. And perhaps that’s what makes it so unforgettable: Brocka doesn’t let us off the hook. Instead, he forces us to confront the messiness of love and sacrifice, and the ways in which we allow ourselves to be complicit in our own suffering.
Even a couple of hours after watching the film, I couldn’t shake its images from my mind: Bona’s haunted expression as she bathes Gardo, her quiet despair as she watches him flaunt his affairs, and the final, devastating tableau that lingers long after the movie ends. Lino Brocka’s unflinching vision, brought to life by Nora Aunor’s extraordinary performance, cements Bona as a landmark in Philippine cinema. Its restoration not only preserves its legacy but reaffirms its relevance in a world still grappling with the same injustices and inequalities it so vividly portrays.
Bona is cinema at its most visceral, intimate, and honest.
A 4K Restoration of ‘Bona’ is currently playing at the Metrograph in New York City. For showtimes and tickets, check out Metrograph’s website.
