Star of her own modern fairy tale
Hers is a veritable, if updated, Cinderella story. A hard-working girl from Quezon City marries a California techpreneur, comes back home and gets introduced to Manila society, then produces and stars in her first movie.
Marilor Isabel Tique is the face of “Ang Viuda (The Widow),” currently in postproduction and set for a limited theatrical release in 2024.
Filmed for four days in an old house in San Pablo, Laguna, “Ang Viuda” has Tique in the role of Sofia, a successful physician and fourth wife of Anton, a politician played by TV actor Gino Ilustre. Thanks to stem cell treatments, Anton’s looks have remained youthful. But he is a wife beater who has a fetish for wax mannequins that he keeps at home, including likenesses of himself and his wife. A cold and brusque gay mayordomo named Gremalda, played by fashion designer Oskar Peralta, knows all of the family’s foul secrets.
Anton gets suspicious when Sofia goes to work, and beats her in morbid jealousy. During one fight, however, she knocks him unconscious and imprisons him in the basement. She proceeds to organize a wake and funeral, with her husband’s wax figure inside the coffin. Anton, eventually escaping, seeks revenge. A cat-and-mouse hunt ensues.
Providential events
The movie is written and directed by Neal “Buboy” Tan, whose filmography traverses the horror, crime and sex genres.
Tique is financing the movie with her husband Max Dunn, president and CEO of Silicon Publishing Inc. (SPI), noted in search engines as “the world’s leading provider of online editing solutions.” SPI’s software is commonly used in the publishing industry.
She is the current vice president and also does administrative work. SPI is credited for developing two of the most widely recognized publishing softwares—XML and Adobe InDesign. They have been a couple for 15 years and are the parents of a 13-year-old son, Max Wilson.
A providential series of events in her 20s turned Tique’s life around. Her mother Lorna was a housewife; father Wilfredo was a carpenter who worked in Saudi Arabia. He died of brain cancer in 1988 when Isabel, his eldest, was 16. A dutiful daughter, she worked odd jobs to provide for the family and put herself through college.
While studying journalism at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, she was employed as a factory hand, then a waitress in a pizza parlor, then a gofer for an events company. After saving a little money, she bought a tricycle that helped earn some extra income and cut school transport costs for her siblings who were all still in school.
In her senior year, she was offered a job at a realty firm. By the late ‘90s, she was a correspondent for Remate and other tabloids owned by businessman-turned-politician Prospero Pichay.
Seeking better opportunities, the intrepid young woman next worked briefly in Hong Kong as an interpreter of business correspondence for a watch distributor. In 2002, leaving with her mother and three children from a marriage gone bad, she flew to the United States as a tourist but soon found a part-time job as a house cleaner in Walnut Creek, California. She moved up to being a caregiver in a 100-bed facility for the elderly and got a work permit.
Noting her people skills and supervisory potential, management advised her to take a short course in administration. She was promoted to administrator right after passing the state board. It was around this time that she met Dunn, who lived near the facility.No vanity project
In March last year, Tique came home for a vacation. She was invited to party in Taal which had a fashion show where she met Peralta. “I’d like to doll you up,” he told her. “Save my number.” She did.
Back in California, Tique has a mannequin on which her gowns are fitted. Here, she found no need for one. In Peralta, she has both a fashion authority and celebrity escort to social gatherings, a requirement for most women being introduced to the privileged class. Immediately noticed from under the designer’s wing, she was invited to join Manila’s Best Dressed 2022, founded and chaired by Karr Marin. This year, she made it to the prestigious Best Dressed Women of the Philippines, the charity fundraiser of the Philippine Cancer Society. Peralta would make her wear his creations in socials and asked her to be his muse.
When she posted her photographs wearing Peralta’s clothes on social media, relatives in Negros Oriental were astonished, thinking that she had become a movie star. Predictably, when she went to visit, much of her time was spent indulging their requests for selfies. In jest, Peralta threw her a challenge: Why not produce her own movie? Titillated by the prospect of fulfilling a childhood dream, Tique ended up in a meeting that the designer set up with Tan and line producer Eddie Littlefield.
So now there’s “Ang Viuda.” Even away from the movie set, Tique likes being “dolled up” and socializing in Peralta’s gowns. She has resolved to ignore judgments about being a social climber. “I love wearing beautiful clothes and I enjoy Oskar’s company, so it’s all good,” she says. People have been wondering if she is the designer’s muse. Peralta does say that he had a field day outfitting the character Sofia.
This 21st-century Cinderella is at last in a position to keep all life options—certainly those for 2024—open. Her three older children Patricia, Patrick and Almira Ysabelle are now all adults. The eldest works in Chicago while the two others are in college in different states. She recently completed an acting workshop with actor Frannie Zamora, and is looking into the possibility of performing and/or producing for the stage.
Proceeds from the screenings of her movie are earmarked for her scholars—children of relatives and close friends—or a nursing home for the elderly. “Ang Viuda,” she says earnestly, is not a vanity project. “What I want it to be is an advocacy of support for these sectors that are closest to my heart,” she says. —CONTRIBUTED INQ
