Goldie (Roxanne Barcelo with buck teeth) is getting married. She invites her old friends to her wedding. Perla (Kylie Versoza) is a goth turned nun-in-training, Ruby (Cristine Reyes) is a doctor who is tired of being a mistress, Emerald (Nathalie Hart) is a model who keeps on loving the wrong guys, and there's also Jade (Meg Imperial), Goldie's friend from the US who has an agenda of her own.
Abay Babes is the kind of sexy comedy that would probably be in vogue around 2003, but doesn't really hold up today. It's loud and noisy, it's full of crass humor that doesn't land (it's more like crashing than anything else) and it's tedious in parts. But to be fair it's occasionally funny, it does manage to reach some nice moments near the end, and there are some very nice performances in here (Meg Imperial and Nathalie Hart are my personal favorites).
The film is structured as a roadtrip, and its best moments are when it calms down from its mania and attempts to delve deeper into each of its characters' insecurities in life. Its funniest moments happen when it tries to subvert expectations and stays true to its characters. Maybe some of these expectations and gender standards are dated as all hell, but at least they're consistent. Kinda.
The film's climax hinges on a non-issue that would be resolved in five minutes had people just stopped and listened to each other, but the film is more concerned with making noise than anything else. There's fun to be had in Abay Babes, but it tends to get lost in the noise.
Jaz (Alex Gonzaga) can't get over her love affair with Migs (Vin Abrenica). She decides to take action into her own hands by erasing her memories of him. But does she have the cojones (and common sense) to do so?
Nakalimutan Ko Nang Kalimutan Ka's story of a pseudoscientific procedure that helps people get over their loved ones reminds one of 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But the former fails where the latter succeeds because of how it elects to tell its story.
It's a fact that the concept of hugot has crept its way into the plots of local romantic movies. Some of them still manage to be effective, and some don't. In a sense, this film can be considered a companion piece to last year's The Write Moment in how it tries to deconstruct hugot stories. For the most part, Nakalimutan Ko Nang Kalimutan Ka plays hugot for laughs. There's a bit of self-awareness behind the whole enterprise, and that part is quite refreshing. But by focusing entirely on the structure and form of hugot, it neglects exploring the whys of hugot, and the intent behind it. Jaz and Alex's breakup is intentionally left vague, and while we see them during happier times as a couple, we don't really see much of the impetus behind their breakup, as opposed to Eternal Sunshine's couple, who we see was getting toxic from the beginning. And even then, Jaz and Migs' relationship feels pretty mundane, and the film doesn't give a lot of reasons why these two should get back together. Because of its extreme self-obsession with hugot, the film starts to go in circles trying to prove a point that doesn't need proving: that breaking up with someone is sad, and that people have difficulty moving on. it doesn't ask why people get so attached with other people, and why people break up in the first place.
A nice contrast to this would have been the character of Kimpoy (Jerald Napoles), who has a hugot story of his own: he's in love with Jaz, but he's unfortunately been friendzoned by Jaz, who is focused solely on her doomed love. To show Kimpoy undergoing the procedure himself would have created a nice symmetry with Jaz's own situation. It would have emphasized the inherent selfishness of hugot stories seen in films like The Write Moment. But the film elects not to do that; Kimpoy is all but forgotten in the film's last moments.
And it's the film's ending that proves to be the thing that topples everything the film was building towards. For a film about moving on, it doesn't do a very good job at getting its characters to move on, as Jaz is forced to interact once again with Migs, as if to tease the possibility of them getting back together. It completely renders the movie pointless, but perhaps that's the point: all these lamentations, these songs, these spoken word poems about a love you cannot have are completely irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. And if that's the case, I guess the film works somehow.
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