Kung Paano Siya Nawala

Near the beginning of Joel Ruiz's Kung Paano Siya Nawala, Lio (JM de Guzman) considers giving away an appliance belonging to his mother (Agot Isidro.) His mother hesitates, as it holds sentimental value to her, but she eventually relents. The idea of attachment permeates this film from beginning to end, embodied mainly in its central characters. On one hand, Lio suffers from prosopagnosia or face blindness, a complex medical condition that prevents him from recognizing faces properly. Because of his condition, he is socially awkward and has difficulty forming lasting friendships. He meets Shana (Rhian Ramos), who is Lio's complete opposite: she is friendly and has a lot of friends, but tends to drift from one person to another.

Ultimately, the film isn't just defined by its protagonist's condition: Lio's face blindness is more than a gimmick, as  it serves as a device to tell another story: a love story about two people who desperately try to make their relationship work, as their respective dysfunctions threaten to tear them apart. Lio defines his life by his illness, and we see the world through his eyes, with characters changing form from one moment to the next. He is crippled by the insecurity that Shana will disappear, wanting to know her entirety - a futile, even foolish exercise. Shana struggles to understand Lio's condition while also grappling with her own personal demons. Both lead actors are fantastic in their respective roles, both of them expertly portraying characters with wounds they would rather hide than show to the world. It's a career-best performance by Ramos, with de Guzman matching her at every turn.

The film also demonstrates how others see us, not just as a name and a face, but through other things, deeply emotional, abstract things - as feelings and emotions, as cold noodles and warm blankets, as the smell of a lover's hair, as the soft cadence of her breathing as she sleeps, as the faint smell of cigarettes, as a short glimpse of her nape, as the softness of her lips, as the warmth of her body, her head on your shoulders, tears falling down her eyes, deeply moved by a beautiful song. And the film creates irony as well through this notion. Even though the mind forgets a great majority of people, there are some people, regardless of circumstance (or perhaps directly because of circumstance), that never fade from memory.

The film does stumble along the way, with some scenes feeling clunky or roughly edited during the film's latter half. Character decisions may feel jarring or out of place, but it all falls into place by the end. Ultimately they feel like nitpicks compared to assessment of the larger whole.

Local romantic films continue to evolve as we traverse the landscape of Philippine Cinema together, and films like Kung Paano Siya Nawala are steps in the right direction. It resonated with me on a deeply personal level, and I consider it one of the year's standout films.