Film Review: 100: A celebration of life

By Anna Valmero IF you only have 100 days left, what will you do to spend it? This is the bomb question that independent, successful career woman Joyce (play ed by Mylene Dizon) faced after being diagnosed twice with inoperable cancer an d that she has three months to live. Learning this, Joyce resigned from work and embarked on a mission to accomplish 100 things she has never done within the time left to her. Helping her in the mission is long-time pal Ruby (played by Eugene Domingo), while Joyce's mother (played by Tessie Tomas) added several tasks to the list in hopes of helping fi nd a cure and make her final days memorable. Some would say the plot of the Cinemalaya film â100â is similar to that of âThe Bucket Listâ starred by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. At some point, yes, but the local film hits it closer to home and takes a youthful stance on how t o approach death. 100 takes on the simplicity of Filipino daily life and finds both humor and tra gedy in it. The movie shows how one can start prioritizing âmust-do'sâ postponed for hundreds of reasons until time is almost over. At the onset of her mission: Joyce prepared for her funeral by picking her fune ral dress, creating a song playlist for her wake and haggling for a white caske t that fitted her budget. She toured Hong Kong with Ruby and even visited Europ e and the Paris Louvre Museum in a very practical way. Ultimately, the biggest challenges for Joyce involved closures, confrontations and goodbyes with the persons dearest to her. As with breaking up, the hardest part of death is when your heart says no goodb yes but you must--to a friend who stood by you always, to a mom who loved you u nconditionally, to a lover and friend and to someone you carried the torch fore ver. The movie also tackles the question on life after death, which the movie tries to answer in the final scene where Joyce walks to her family and sees them go a bout life. The movie starts and ends with Joyce walking silently along the shore and the h ill overlooking Pinatubo -- a nice transition of moving from life to death. The movie was effective in taking a light approach to a matter as serious as de ath, but the director could have been pruned the Hong Kong tour. The movie also appears to be a high-budget film as the production was able to s hoot scenes on high-rise buildings in Makati and get support from several comme rcial establishments. As for the cast, Mylene and Eugene were able to play their roles with joy and s eriousness. Even Tessie did something different in the movie which I think is a first time. Indeed, movies like 100 shows that Filipinos can still watch quality local fil ms. Sadly, only a few people lined up to buy tickets and the cinema was barely a quarter-full when I saw it last weekend. In the end, the film manages to convey that people should take every opportunit y to live and make the most out of life -- you will never know when your time i s up.