Ishmael Bernal's opus recreates the quality and slow pace of life in a dying village surrounded by the sea as it is caught in the eternal cycle of love and hate, of fertility and pollution, of birth and death. A bold and successful attempt to depart from the usual commercial fare, it cryptically paints a large, bleak canvas showing rural fold and how their chances at redemption and happiness are irreversibly decimated by poverty, ignorance, neglect and the dark side of big business.