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Lifestyle

Unexpected romances


I’ve been told with disdain that I have too much hope for local movies, puwede namang hintayin na lang na ipalabas sa TV ang pelikula. But it isn’t with hope that I go to the cinemas to watch Pinoy films. It is with excitement, always: I enter a cinema willing to be surprised, having as context what is usual or normal for movies on our shores. It isn’t with notion(s) of hope, as it is with a sense of how things have changed, and how there are still plenty of possibilities. So I was willing to be surprised by My Valentine Girls (Regal Films and GMA Films), the trailer of which promised a trilogy, one that’s rarely done for romantic comedies these days, unless we count as love stories too the overdone Shake Rattle & Roll horror franchise. The conclusions for this movie are easy, the enjoyment even more so. I chalk it up to two things: one, the limited amount of time for each episode made for storytelling that was quick, with no minute wasted on long stretches of nothing; two, creative directors are all you need, the ones who have a sense of how love stories are supposed to look, how comfortable love can be, and how sexual tension need not be about pretty boys and girls, and rarely happens in the most ideal of moments. It’s also never easy. My only question is: who was directing the story beyond the three episodes? Richard Gutierrez plays a writer with a deadline, and we are treated to his novel-in-progress by quick shifts to the three love stories within it. The story of the writer though is left mostly untreated and was generally uncreative: he was wearing glasses, had a nosy little sister who promptly disappears halfway through the movie, and there were just random moments of pacing and drinking coffee to show “writer" moments. It would’ve been interesting to see how else he was coming up with these love stories, and why exactly it needed to be written with such diversity. Because what’s here are three stories so different from each other, I would have loved a scene where Richard-the-writer talks about his novel’s genre, diverse as the stories within it are. That being said, each episode was filled with possibility. The episode “Soulmates" directed by Dom Zapata for example is a classic ghost love story with a surprising layer of class difference, and in the end the truth of no ghosts, just limbo. Girl is rich and independent, boy is taxi driver workaholic. Girl hits boy in an accident, girl is in the hospital then recovers and keeps seeing boy. Boy thinks he’s dead, girl thinks she’s alive. In the end, both of them are comatose and in limbo. You know the ending to this one, and the truth is, it’s the manner in which the story’s told that works until you wonder: why doesn’t girl have family around her? And why didn’t her family spend on the boy’s hospitalization seeing as she was to blame for the mishap? Rhian Ramos proves she’s got acting chops here, but she seems too self-conscious for comfort, maybe too afraid of looking ugly. She had make-up all the time, including when she was just asleep or in a coma, making for weak characterization. Richard has got the masa speech / tone / acting down pat, and it’s one that has got to be used in future projects. When made to do real roles outside of his comfort zone, Richard just does it infinitely better than when all he has to be is matinee idol. Which is what he ends up being in “BBFF" directed by Andoy Ranay, love story number two. This one’s a classic love triangle, except that here boy and girl are best friends, almost like brother and sister to some extent, maybe husband and wife to another extent. Scenes of grocery shopping together, of weekend rituals, of getting into bed para magharutan establish this friendship that’s stuck where it is, where it has been decided to stay. Enter new girl in boy’s life, the girl who becomes girlfriend, the one who would struggle with feeling like intruder to an established life for the best of friends. She would be the one person in the story who’s woman enough to admit defeat, and demands some truthfulness. That girl is Lovi Poe, and she takes over this episode like she ain’t the other woman. We forgive Solenn Heussaff whose acting debut this is, though her role as best friend does work because she seems to be exactly that in real life. We ask about Richard’s motivations because we don’t even really know who his character is, and why exactly he doesn’t insist on a relationship with his best friend. As pretty boy, Richard just loses the angst that’s needed for any kind of acting. But Lovi Poe was flawless in this movie: she was consistently the image of the girlfriend who struggles with being the other woman in her man’s life; she walked in crazy high stilettos with micro mini skirts and didn’t look at all like a cheap girl. Instead she was the perfect counterpoint to Solenn’s athletic and tomboyish, go-getter mestiza womanhood. Lovi’s womanhood was about being sexy and intelligent, independent and morena through and through. In this movie Lovi proves she’s willing to go the extra mile: at some point in the movie she is without the make-up and the heels, is in tears upon admitting defeat, and she proves even more her mettle as actress. That she is morena in a sea of white girls and whitening products is just wonderful; that she is good at what she does just saves this episode really. Meanwhile, there was no need to save “Gunaw" at all. Directed by Chris Martinez and starring Eugene Domingo with Richard, this was everything unexpected about this movie. It’s post-apocalyptic and has the writer-Richard introducing it with big scientific words. The episode itself begins with boy surviving the end of the world, and he is bored, lives out of his car, takes much effort at finding other people who have survived like him. He plays with zombies who litter the world, i.e., he does action sequences as if there is a camera, with no fear at all, and with different guns in the backseat of his four-wheel drive. Yes, this last guy on earth is as sexy as it comes. Soon enough he runs into girl, living in a church, survivor of the world’s end, too. But she isn’t at all the kind of girl the boy imagines would be last on earth. She forces herself on his plans in hopes of keeping him, until they come across a community of men who have all searched in vain for the last woman alive. The girl is suddenly goddess; she’s also the only chance for humanity’s survival. So they run off into the night, boy and girl on a horse, now together and in love. Yes, the latter is true, and it can only be so given Richard’s acting in this episode. Again when it’s beyond his comfort zone, this guy allows for acting prowess to shine through, and makes even the strangest of possibilities logical and true. Eugene of course is her comedic self with impeccable timing, one that Richard seems to have fed on, or maybe one that he’s always had, but is just lost in his usual matinee idol roles. The cinematography of this episode was surprisingly fantastic, costumes and make-up for the zombies wonderfully authentic and tongue-in-cheek (the Philippine team makes for fast running zombies eh?), Eugene’s and Richard’s outfits perfect for the post-apocalyptic genre. Half the time I couldn’t believe at all that this was a local film, the other half I couldn’t believe that we could actually do the darkness and destruction and sheen of the post-apocalyptic and zombie genre as we know it. And so My Valentine Girls could really only end on that high a note, seeing as the real ending just seemed forced, showing the launch of the writer-Richard’s novel. The truth is it could’ve ended with him shutting down his laptop, or printing out the pages of the novel, showing us that aspect of being writer, of being in perpetual possibility instead of certainty, of no endings really, just the endless doom of deadlines. That too is stuff for love and romance. – GMA News Online
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