Here, a young woman is repeatedly raped by her father while her sister looks the other way, pretending not to know; a religious charitable organization physically abuses its female wards; a wealthy philathropist traffics women as sex workers abroad; and high-ranking government officials are in cahoots with both law-enforcers and thugs in operating profitable criminal rings.
At the heart of it all is Rosel (Carmina Villaroel) battling her demons after enduring repeated episodes of incestuous rape by her father, the perceived betrayal by her sister (Janice De Belen) who did nothing to rescue her, and the violent treatment she received from the people in the religious house she and her sister were staying at.
Some people just couldn't get a break, so with nothing left to lose, Rosel leaves her sister behind and decides to run away.
In Quiapo, the seedy underbelly of Manila, Rosel meets Ardo (Richard Gomez), a petty criminal who is as equally hard of luck and who has neither any clear direction nor purpose in life. The two click and decide to live together in a makeshift claustrophobic shanty in Manila's odorous slums, making money by scamming people.
Both Rosel and Ardo describe themselves as "wating," a colloquial reference to streetsmart. In their minds, they are able to survive using their wits and ability to make something out of nothing, even though that means resorting to nefarious schemes. This is so because in a world that treats them like shit, contemplating the morality or legality of things is an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
It is this same sense of grit that allowed both of them to move up from the world of petty crimes to the more complex and scheming world of crime syndicates involving the rich and powerful. Young, good-looking, and skillful at manipulation harnessed by the breadth of their experience scamming others, Rosel and Ardo get to play the role of English-speaking members of high society talking about art and sipping wine while hatching out schemes to steal the high-end cars of their so-called friends. It's a world far removed from where they began, with stakes far higher and margins much wider.
In this new world where lack of trust is the only currency for survival, will Rosel and Ardo be able to use their streetsmart sensibilities to overcome the wiliness of their cohorts? Or will they end up as disposable pawns when their bosses find no more use for them -- faceless and nameless nobodies whose personal tragedies mean little, if at all?
Ishmael Bernal's final film affords viewers little opportunity to feel hopeful for both Rosel and Ardo. Verily, the amorality of these two characters is the sum of institutional failure and neglect, their desperation a constancy throughout their young lives.
In this sense, the film is a critique of the moral failures of a society overriden by the insatiable greed of a few, where the majority's collective despair is a hollow echo in an empty chamber. It is, Ishmael Bernal tells us as he wraps up an illustrious career, a society full of Rosels and Ardos, whose failures as individuals is just as much the result of such society's moral decay.