Manila in the Claws of Light (1975) review

Julio Madiaga (Bembol Roco), a fisherman from the island of Marinduque, travels to Manila to search for his beloved girlfriend Ligaya Paraiso (Hilda Koronel), who was sold into sexual slavery, and endures extreme conditions: he gets a low-paying job in construction, is then coerced into being a male prostitute, leaves that and returns to his previous position and eventually locates Ligaya, but she's a radically changed person (and has a baby).  At the beginning, it's successful at showing the socio-economic hardships of the disadvantaged (fittingly, all of Julio's co-workers are "big dreamers") and even reminds everyone of how dangerous doing manual labor can be (one man, a singer, is hit with a bucket and plummets to his death), although it slips from there into tacky stylistic choices (to over-emphasize the melodrama), run-on scenes and questionable decisions (is Julio so clueless he doesn't realize homosexuality isn't a lifestyle for him?).  What doesn't help matters is Roco isn't what you'd call the most "emotive" of actors and his character doesn't have anything meaningful to say - you could have spraypainted dark hair on a strip of plywood to be his stand-in - and the movie is methodically "set up" for a tragic conclusion involving an ice pick, a corrupt Chinese "businessman" and a vengeful mob.