Bagets

Bagets follows five teenage boys through their final year of high school in the Philippines. Adie, Tonton, Gilbert, Topee and Arnel are close friends who face the usual pressures of growing up: parents they clash with, rejection, first romances and the question of who they want to become. Much of what they go through is typical adolescent experimentation, and the film treats their experiences with a mix of humour and drama. What holds the story together is the friendship among the five, which proves more lasting than the distractions around them.

The film was directed by Maryo J. de los Reyes, working from a screenplay by Jake Tordesillas, with Ramon Salvador producing for Viva Films. It was the first of two features de los Reyes directed, made two decades before Silent Passage, and it arrived at the height of a wave of Filipino youth-oriented pictures in the mid-1980s. The cast is led by Aga Muhlach, William Martinez, Herbert Bautista, J.C. Bonin and Raymond Lauchengco as the friends, with Yayo Aguila as Rose, and runs to 48 credited performers.

At 116 minutes, Bagets blends comedy, drama and romance, following its characters through the ups and downs of one school year without losing sight of the group at its centre.