Irene Villamor's Sid & Aya begins with an overhead shot of intersections, which will become one of the film's visual motifs. Because it is in these crosswalks and intersections where people meet, sometimes fleetingly, sometimes once then never again.
Sid (Dingdong Dantes) works as a stock broker. He's nearing the top of the financial food chain, often screwing over co-workers for his own gain. When he meets Aya (Anne Curtis), he approaches her on similar terms: he offers her money in exchange for her companionship, a scenario that on the surface shares similarities with Gary Marshall's seminal Pretty Woman (1990). Sid's offer is done out of both loneliness and curiosity. But Aya has her own wants and needs, and she's playing the game too for her own reasons.
What results is not quite a love story, but the means to get to something quite like it. Villamor has mastered the art of the meet-cute; in her previous film, Meet Me in St. Gallen, the meet-cute forms the center of the story, while in this film, the meet-cute is extended to a number of interactions that fleshes out Sid and Aya's relationship and makes any potential heartbreak all the more effective. And like her previous film, the last act of the film displaces both characters in an unfamiliar place, symbolic of the growing disconnect in their relationship borne from their respective life situations.
It's evident as Sid and Aya's relationship grows that they are constrained by their different socioeconomic backgrounds, which inform their viewpoints and life decisions. Sid has never lived for anyone else but himself, and his life (and his attitude towards relationships) are more open and liberal. Aya has spent all her life living in the service of others, and her filial responsibilities are a major part of the film's eventual conflict. Romances that hinge upon socioeconomic inequality are a staple of Filipino storytelling; one cannot count the number of local romantic stories involving a rich person marrying someone born from poverty. But Sid & Aya is one of the few works of fiction that grounds that notion in reality, eschewing the fantasy wish fulfillment treatment. Their ultimate decisions - and their character arcs - are more realistic and relatable as a result.
To be honest, it's hard to articulate the appeal of this film. There's something in how it's constructed and crafted, in how the chemistry between the two leads work so well, in how their lives mirror ours in more ways than one, that I just love.
The film is admittedly not perfect. A particular story arc peters off with little to no resolution, for example. But those are minor quibbles in what is otherwise a remarkable, strangely appealing film. I fell in love with Sid & Aya from the start, and I think it's one of the year's best so far, featuring a director at the top of her game.
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