Karnal

(Of the Flesh) / 1983 / Color / Drama / 123 minutes / Direction: Marilou Diaz-Abaya / Screenplay: Ricardo Lee / Cinematography: Manolo Abaya / Editing: Marc Tamate / Production Design: Fiel Zabat / Sound: Rudy Baldovino / Music: Ryan Cayabyab / Produced by Cine Suerte/ Cast: Phillip Salvador (Narcing), Vic Silayan (Gusting), Cecille Castillo (Puring), Joel Torre (Goryo), Charito Solis (the narrator), Grace Amilbangsa (Doray), Crispin Medina, Joonee Gamboa, Rolando Tinio, Ella Luansing, Rustica Carpio, and Vangie Labalan

A middle-aged spinster, serving as the narrator, unfolds the tragic drama of a prominent family ruled by a wealthy landowner.

Newlyweds Narcing and Puring arrive from the city to settle in the groom’s hometown of Mulawin. His father, Gusting, is struck by Puring’s resemblance to his dead wife. The similarity drives Gusting to lust after his daughter-in-law. He makes sexual advances toward Puring, who shows her resentment by egging Narcing on to become more assertive. At the same time, she has to put up with the barrio folks’ indignation over her friendship with a deaf-mute, Goryo. In the violent family quarrel that ensues, Narcing attacks his father with a long hunting knife, decapitating him in the process.

While her husband is in jail, Puring gives birth to a freak daughter, which the barrio folk consider a child of the devil. After burying her child to escape a doomed existence, Puring flees back to the city with Narcing, who has escaped from jail. But the authorities catch up with him and he commits suicide.

The storyteller reveals her identity as the niece of Narcing and Puring. Her mother, Doray, was Narcing’s sister. Forced by her father into a marriage not of her own choice, Doray eventually escaped from the family home with her lover. She, too, was a victim of the family’s entrapment in the past.

Karnal won six awards from Gawad Urian: Best Actor (Salvador), Best Supporting Actor (Silayan), Best Supporting Actress (Solis), Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, and Best Music. It won Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Production Design in the Film Academy of the Philippines Awards. The Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences honored it with the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Musical Score, Best Production Design, and Best Sound awards. The ABS-CBN Film Restoration Project had undertaken the digital restoration of Karnal in 2015, with the help of Central Digital Lab. The restored version was screened in selected cinemas and on Cinema One.