Cinelokal | I Found My Heart in Santa Fe botches its romance

Viktor (Will Devaughn) comes to scenic and sunny Bantayan Island for a vacation. While there, he meets Jennifer (Roxanne Barcelo), whose family owns a beachside inn. As one might guess from the title, a relationship begins to form.

I Found My Heart in Santa Fe is Cinelokal's first new title (meaning it hasn't been shown anywhere else.) It touts itself as a romantic comedy set in a beautiful exotic location. Unfortunately only one of those statements holds true, because the film is neither funny nor romantic.

As stated in the first paragraph, a relationship does begin to form between Viktor and Jennifer, but a good chunk of the film (more than an hour) has Jennifer acting hostile towards poor Viktor for no apparent reason. In-story Viktor is a pretty chill guy and has done the woman no wrong, making her actions unnecessarily mean towards the poor chap. It turns out she hates him by association: her former lover (also a foreigner) bailed at her wedding, but we don't know that until more than an hour has passed, and by then her character was extremely grating. Perhaps she's just supposed to be coy or something, but Barcelo isn't exactly the best actress to pull it off. When we get a genuine moment between the two, there's only like 20 minutes left in the film, and by then there's no chemistry and no time to build a proper relationship. This is a travesty considering Devaughn and Barcelo are a real life couple and the film could have built on that. Instead the film is content with showing us cringey scenes and histrionics that have zero charm.

That said, Bantayan Island (and Santa Fe by extension) is quite gorgeous. The film makes it a point to show us that there are many fun activities to be had in the island: going to the beach, drinking the night away, running a triathlon, spending some time near a waterfall. I actually want to visit the island after having seen the film. It's more convenient (and entertaining) to just ignore the romance and take in the sights and scenery.

The film decides to engage in histrionics and contrivances instead of engaging in any meaningful drama. A dramatic turn near the end brings more questions than answers (in fact, the whole scene does not have more than a few lines of dialogue, though one can imply what is happening) and its impact on Jennifer's character is annoying rather than dramatic, complete with an exasperated, tone-deaf "sulat nanaman!?"

Forget the tepid romance, but remember the place. If you're a beach person and want to go somewhere nice and relatively quiet, Bantayan Island's a great choice. Enjoy yourself. Life's short, you know?

Cinelokal screens at selected SM cinemas, with new films out every Friday. Visit the Cinelokal Facebook page for more details.