Pam (Kim Molina) is an online entrepreneur. She thinks she has a great relationship with her filmmaker boyfriend Jiggs (Gab Lagman)... that is, until she overhears him implying that in terms of girlfriends, she's just okay. They break up but Pam still wants to be in a relationship with him, so she enlists the help of buko seller Isko (Jerald Napoles) to act as her new boyfriend to jealous trap Jiggs into getting back together. That sounded really silly in hindsight as I typed it, but I swear it works somehow.
In the post love team space left by the tail end of the 2010's, local couple-centric romantic films have changed - while still structurally the same, they're beginning to explore different things, straying away from the wattpad paradigm of a decade past. Kim Molina and Jerald Napoles represent a different kind of 'love team', if that term even holds weight these days - a hilarious couple with endless chemistry, and one that's willing to be a little bit more mischievous, a little more raunchy than the usual suspects. It's safe to say that they carry this film from something that is "pwede na" to something that's more than decent.
That's not all, of course - the film touches on a lot of different other things. Perhaps the most consequential is how the screenplay addresses how people assess their self worth and the worth of others, whether in a relationship or in other situations. In terms of relationships, it's perhaps best articulated in a scene where Isko tells Pam that he and Jiggs both see the same person but in different ways. Pam underestimated Isko when she first saw him (and ascribed certain class-based stereotypes that she later regretted), but came to know him as a dependable, (mostly) honest person with a heart of gold. Knowing whether you are valued or not in a relationship is important because if you aren't, then why are you settling for less?
While it is conventionally structured for the most part, the central pair of Girlfriend na Pwede na elevate the material. Maybe just a little bit, but a little bit can sometimes be more than enough.
I've never truly understood the reasoning behind the story of Job. Caught in a cosmic bet between god and the devil, poor Job had to suffer the loss of his entire family and everything that was his in the material world. Job kept his faith and thanks to that (and maybe because the devil owed god a few bucks or something) he regained everything he lost, and more. Not his resurrected family, mind you - a whole new one (in my recollection, the Islamic version of the story has Job's original family returned to him, which makes me like that version slightly better.) Ostensibly this is a lesson about the power of faith and how god always has a plan for us. But for me, god's actions in this presumably fictitious tale strike me as the actions not of an infinitely loving god, but one that is capricious, petty, and amoral - using his creations as pawns in a greater cosmic game of ultimately little significance. The biblical Job may have had descendants for many generations, but his first family remains dead, corpses rotting in the ground, disembodied souls subjected to suffering just to make a point. If there's any moral to be had for me in that story, it is that divine justice and justice on earth are completely different things.
Jeff (Carlo Aquino) goes to Legazpi, Albay to unwind. While there, he meets Lizzy (Barbie Imperial), a tour guide/alcoholic who seems intent on doing a Liver Cirrhosis any% speedrun. They hit it off and sparks fly. There is one problem, however: Jeff's a seminarian in regency, on his way towards a long career in priesthood.
The buildup to I Love Lizzy is pretty good, perhaps some of the best material RC Delos Reyes has made in his body of directorial work. Imperial and Aquino have the chemistry to pull it off and some interesting character beats that complicate and give depth to their burgeoning relationship. Jeff and Lizzy feel like fully fleshed out, warts-and-all humans. The buildup from "first meet up" to "doing cute things together" to the emotional climax of their love story is very well done.
The one thing that turned me off from the film is the film's third act. The film could have worked just as well with its message that sometimes God helps us help others in not so conventional ways. Instead, it goes with a route that seems to borrow heavily from Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, famously adapted into a 1999 film of the same name starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. In both, one party makes a deal with the divine in exchange for someone else's well being. It looks romantic on paper, and it will probably hold true for people wrapped up in antiquated, masochistic, fear-driven conceptions of faith. But for me, this is a film about a love triangle where a selfish and petty god is the antagonistic third party. Even the last scene of I Love Lizzy, which draws heavily from hugot tropes, feels like a taunt from that same god: that love is meaningless, and everyone, especially Jeff, belongs only to me. It's a symptom that's not only present in this film, but numerous other faith adjacent productions that think that a deity that actively inflicts suffering is actually good somehow. I am not an atheist, and I don't think I will be anytime soon, and I don't believe God is like that.
This doesn't necessarily mean the film is bad - I totally get that this is more a me problem than a film problem. In my own ending to this film, Jeff teams up with Lucifer and storms heaven to exterminate the heavenly host, ultimately slaying the evil god that wronged him. But I don't think MAVX has the budget to do that. I sincerely hope that this isn't a faith based film, because if anything I've probably lost several million ligtas points at this juncture. Haha.
No comments:
Post a Comment