Siftings
Culture Watch: ‘And I Love You So’—A Review
It has been some weeks since ”Siftings” was last seen on this page, and even longer than that since it last focused on cultural happenings in and around the city. Blame it please on time and physical constraints. Often the flesh is more than willing to honor commitments that it is unable to accomplish, though the spirit is writhing in the agony of embarrassment. But here we are.
The abovementioned movie is probably no longer showing by the time this column goes to press, but I’d like to review it just the same. There are so few movies these days which I am willing to spend my money on that I have taken to watching Filipino movies, even the sticky romantic variety I used to shun. And this movie made me curious primarily because its endorsers are not the usual ”masa” audiences streaming out of the moviehouse, grinning their gap-toothed happy smiles from ear to ear and shouting their satisfaction, to wit: “Ang ganda-ganda”, “ang galing-galing ni Bea”, etc. Its endorsers are the peer group of celebrities and movie stars, like Piolo Pascual, John Lloyd Cruz, and Kris Aquino, whose gushing could not leave out her ego-tripping as in: “Tinext ko na si Ma’am Charo that if ever they make me a movie offer, si Direk Lauren (Dyogi) na ang magdirek, kasi ang galing galing galing niya talaga.” Or something to that effect, a typical Kris-omaniacal rave!
But this movie, as a Filipino film of this variety, is arguably the most intelligent that I have ever sampled in a long time. Maybe because the director is a male who seemed concerned with going easy on sentimental claptrap such as that of, say “Where Love Begins” and “For the First Time?” It certainly has less “ka-kornihan” as my friends used to say. And the story dares to be different: a young woman widowed at the height of her marital bliss, suddenly losing her husband of five months, who had been the ideal loving, caring partner, to an embolism in his brain. The movie focuses on how the young widow deals with her pain and how she finds another love too soon – in fact, uncomfortably much too soon which makes her run away from another emotional attachment before she is ready for it. This is the matter of the movie: that it should take some time before commitments can be forgotten in such a way that one can move on with one’s life. Of course we all know this. But the movie serves to remind us that we should move on with our lives after great tragedy. The only thing required of us is that we should do it with a measure of grace and dignity, the slow unhurried pace of ritual and ceremony with which we celebrate Life, which makes human life so sad, so beautiful, and despite our mortality, so timeless.
The only thing I didn’t like is the requisite happy ending in the midst of a crowded metropolis (Makati or Bonifacio Global City?), where the heroine runs after her hero and they embrace and kiss in sight of streetgoers. Corny, of course, but this is an ending to make the masa audience thrill with delight. But strangely, the ending did not make me as uncomfortable as I should have been. Partly because the characters were more believable than those of former Star Cinema films, where characters supposedly depicting Manila’s upper crust speak and act like some moron’s idea of how the upper crust is supposed to speak and act. At one point, I felt the same discomfort when Bea’s character rents out her condo to the hero for “P35,000 a month, 3 months advance, 3 months deposit.” Wow! That translates to P210,000 that the hero has to cough up in order to be able to live there! And to think that he works only as a disc jockey in some disco house or dive!
Such inconsequential details can spoil one’s thorough enjoyment of an otherwise noteworthy film. Noteworthy mainly because of Bea Alonso’s remarkably intelligent and focused acting. Some of her scenes are a revelation of her maturing talent. She is turning out to be a major dramatic actress, and may become the finest of her generation. I wish though that she would not be saddled with inane roles like “Betty La Fea”, never mind that it is an “internationally acclaimed” role. As for Sam Milby and Derek Ramsay, one can see that constant acting workshops are improving their talents, lending them the ease to tackle dramatic scenes with subtlety.
The next offering of Star Cinema promises to be even more interesting in tackling a hitherto unusual subject: a mother-son-male lover triangle. From the trailer, it looks to be a mature and sophisticated treatise on this relationship which we can look forward to. It does not seem to me like it is a film for the masa. Or is the masa ready for this kind of film as entertainment for them?
Before I end, let me ask this: Now that movies are generally shown in the malls all over the country, with their middle class ambiance and clientele, will this affect the quality of future movies? Will the tastes of the masa still dominate the future of movie-making in the Philippines? How exciting a prospect it would be if, in the process of changing venues, film quality is improved, and audience tastes eventually get improved too! That would indeed be a great day for Philippine Cinema!