Direct from the Cleveland Film Festival
Review of "The Bet Collector"

Freelance writer, Anne Price is covering the Cleveland International Film Festival this week for About.com Cleveland. She'll be sharing her thoughts and opinions about the festival and the films throughout the next ten days. Below is her first contribution -- a review of the Philippine feature film, The Bet Collector.

Determined, loving, religious Amelita (a tour-de-force performance by Gina Pareno) spends her early mornings praying to the Virgin Mary and her afternoons collecting bets as a jueteng kubrador in her poverty-stricken urban Manila neighborhood in The Bet Collector (Kubrador).

The illegal betting game has captivated the country in recent years, reaching as far up as former Philippine President Joseph Estrado, who was accused with receiving illegal gambling profit in 2000.

Jueteng Fever
Still, nowhere has the jueteng fever spread as fast or as fervently as it has in poor neighborhoods; according to the film, millions in the Philippines rely on the game as a means of income in an increasingly desperate environment.

Amelita is no exception. Sweet-talking her neighbors, showing them seeming benefit and opportunity within each of the challenges they confide to her, she believes wholeheartedly in religion and numerology -- that, and evading the police, pretending she's just collecting alms when they inspect her handbag for signs of scribbled bet numbers.

The betting itself consists of two numbers in a manual lottery pull usually performed by small numbers placed in a bottle, shaken and chosen randomly. For Amelita, the numbers represent each neighbor's challenge or concern and each has specific meaning she explains as she helps neighbors make their choices.

A Mother's Love
It's this willingness to turn adversity into asset that keeps Amelita afloat; with a husband whose primary job appears to be watching game shows; a freeloading, perennially pregnant daughter; and itinerant son-in-law, Amelita knows whatever the family needs she must provide. The character is reminiscent of Penelope Cruz' Raimundo in Almodovar's Volver: nothing is too much to ask a mother when it comes to taking care of those she loves.

Regardless of her own failing health and increased sense of "being bewitched" by the ghost of her deceased soldier son, she wanders amid the squalor and equally intense camaraderie found in the streets of her urban community, certain every event is a sign pointing to a pair of winning numbers.

Not even the death of a promising young neighbor student is without numerical divine intervention; though saddened while comforting the boy's grandfather, Amelita is no less inspired to jot down the betting numbers "13-29" for a future number pull, representing "grief to death."

Though police haul in various kubradors and jueteng participants, including Amelita, after booking said criminals they're not above placing bets themselves. Such is the nature of their daily lives: while illegal, there's something so enticing about the prospect of easy money in a world filled with relatively little worth dreaming about that even those charged with upholding the law cannot keep themselves away from the game.

Filming The Bet Collector
Director Jeffrey Jeturian (Bikini Open and Bridal Shower) is content to leisurely let his camera follow wherever Amelita goes, creating a natural, day-by-day character study of one woman's life during the week leading up to All Saints Day. Not plot-driven nor particularly detailed, the film is nevertheless filled with inspired moments deeper than they appear on the surface. The end result is a captivating composite of the beauty and meaning found within even the most materially impoverished lives and how human beings, regardless of social stature and living conditions, are connected by shared dreams and family ties.

The Bet Collector runs 98 minutes and also features Fonz Deza, Nanding Josef, Johnny Manahan, Jhong Del Rosario and Nico Antonio. An encore presentation of the film will be held on Sunday March 18 at 9:45 p.m. Tickets are $10.