Bahay Bata by Eduardo Roy Jr.

I’ve never watched a movie like “Bahay Bata” before, a movie whose plot takes place inside a real and active hospital. The hospital also happens to be the Dr. Jose Fabella Hospital in Manila, notorious for its high birth rate tallied at an average of 60 babies per day. I read somewhere that “bahay bata”, although literally translated says “baby house”, also means “uterus” in Tagalog/Pilipino.

Slow and painful start

In the very beginning we start off outside the hospital with a shaky camera over a pregnant woman’s shoulder as she slowly walks inside. The movie here starts off so slow that I immediately make judgements on the film, wondering if this was going to be yet another drama set in documentary-style cinematics (a style I’ve become accustomed to watching in indie films). Before I could think “Brillante Mendoza copycat” the camera enters a real delivery room and the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur. Are these all actors? Nope, that is in fact a real baby coming out of that uterus.

Who is the main character of the movie?

We then meet nurse Sarah (Diana Zubiri) alongside patients and staff as they go though the day-to-day events in the hospital. But as we follow Sarah we also follow several new mothers, three of them young mothers around the age of 15, another mother having her 13th child, and yet another a convict handcuffed to her bed and escorted by guards. We are also introduced to the different hospital departments and what they do, which familiarizes us with the hospital itself. Directed by Eduardo Roy Jr., this mass introduction is indeed one with a purpose as disclosed by Roy during a Q&A session: “the main character is the ward and the hospital and what are those problems of the hospital.”

Because it is filmed within the hospital walls and weaves within it footage of actual rooms and births, it blurs the line between what is real and what is scripted. Discerning between actors playing fictional characters or “playing themselves” is often difficult to make. Eventually I found myself focused more on the inner workings of the hospital and less on determining what was real and what wasn’t. Which of the inner workings here was pre-determined? Who cares? I was entertained by Sarah’s gossipy co-workers as much as I was entranced by how babies were delivered at the hospital.

“Baby Factory”

Roy’s wide-angle shots of 10 beds filled with resting mothers (2-3 per bed) and the audio picking up every crying baby and patient number mentioned over the intercom gives us a peak inside the windows of this “baby factory”. These images tell us that the lives of hundreds of women and newborns are being delicately passed, ferried, and/or escorted from one room to the next, as if in a human assembly line.

The Reality

Near the end, the movie slows back down and finally ends with another slow and painful walk. This time of somebody else, but I won’t spoil it any further than that. The end result? Myself left with questions about the fate of this hospital rather than the fate of Sarah’s. A testament to Roy’s intent to give the hospital the starring role. I then did what any armchair movie-goer-turned-social-activist would do: I googled stuff.

The Dr. Jose Fabella Hospital has more births than the 2nd busiest maternity ward in the United States, which tallies at about 35 births per day as of 2012 (I couldn’t find which was the 1st busiest ward in the U.S). At an average of 60 babies born each day (update: another source cites 90 per day), it has garnered enough attention from international media, movie reviews better than mine, and filmmakers like Roy who want to bring to light such a “high-volume” hospital that seems to have mastered the logistics and operations needed to churn out so many deliveries, yet seem to falter at curbing the number of births in the first place.

By the end of the film, I was glad I had watched it. Even though it was slow in the beginning and in the end, I felt I had gone on an informative video tour of a hospital in a busy metropolis and at the same time was entertained by the interactions between the mothers and staff (both real and scripted) in the midst of the hustle and bustle of a busy maternity ward. Because of this I felt compelled to learn a bit more, from viewing photos by others documenting this hospital to what legislation Philippine politicians are cooking up in relation to these issues.

Until next review, here’s to more googling. Salamat for reading and keep watching Filipino movies!

Bahay Bata
Directed by Eduardo Roy Jr.
Starring Diana Zubiri
Cast: Sue Prado as Heidi, Mailes Kanapi as Dr. Balboa, Pewee O Hara as Cora, Janna Tiangco as Cathy, Yul Servo as Peter.