Four Sisters and a Wedding (Cathy Garcia-Molina, 2013)
Predictably, Four Sisters and a Wedding is plagued with all the deficiencies and excesses of a movie that caters to the masses. It suffers from an identity crisis, but that identity crisis is its biggest selling point especially in a country where being all-in-one is a virtue and a movie that offers tears, laughs, and lessons is a prized commodity. Four Sisters and a Wedding is adamantly a comedy, one that uses in unbridled exaggerations and popular wit to earn chuckles. Along the way, it suddenly transforms itself into a drama, with each of the movie’s multiple characters getting their fair share of profusely teary expositions. At the end of the movie, everything is wrapped up almost too neatly and easily with just mouthfuls of motherhood statements that render all issues and conflicts resolved.
Also predictably, it is that trait of Four Sisters and a Wedding that would be targeted by detractors. The movie’s insistence to remain within the borders of a cinema that is stubbornly safe for the purpose of commercialism is considered its downfall. Because it aspires to appeal to the majority, its story clunks with unnecessary heft and it confuses with its inconsistent mood and temperament. However, to simply dismiss the movie for its intention to comfortably exist in a market that knows fully well what it wants is short-sighted.
The Salazar sisters (Toni Gonzaga, Bea Alonzo, Angel Locsin and Shaina Magdayao) have been living their lives, connected only by occasional phone calls, until the sudden upcoming wedding of their youngest brother (Enchong Dee) forces them to reunite and join forces for what they think is the good of their family. As it turns out, the Bayags, the family which the youngest Salazar is marrying into, are as tactless as they are wealthy, convincing the sisters to plan together to dissuade their beloved brother from continuing the wedding. From a story by Jose Javier Reyes, whose works are almost always inspired by his sharp commentaries on Filipino middle class faults and aspirations, the screenplay written by Vanessa Valdez manages to simplify and meld various Filipino experiences into a package that is amiable enough.
For what it’s worth, within what may be considered a genre of Philippine escapist cinema that is mostly produced by mainstream studios, Four Sisters and a Wedding is actually quite remarkable. Its indulgent comedy parts are mostly hilarious, its extensively dramatic climax, moving. Director Cathy Garcia-Molina fulfills the requirements of commercial movie-making, balancing the vulgarity and tactlessness that draws laughter and tears with some semblance of predictability with some elegance and restraint, as may become necessary.
It is the movie’s disarming earnestness that is truly admirable. At one point, the sisters suddenly tearfully expose their failures and insecurities, probably in defense of their mostly despicable demeanor throughout the movie. Garcia-Molina forgets all notion of subtlety, allowing her actresses, all of whom are brilliant, to emotionally verbalize regrets and apprehensions that most of us would never dare expose. There are simply no pretensions of depth or insight as it specifically targets the heart, coursing its way to it through its familiar tale whose threads and strands seem to be plucked straight from the sometimes joyful and sometimes painful eccentricities of being Filipino.
Perhaps the primary motivation for Cathy Garcia-Molina’s Unofficially Yours is to craft a love story that has graduated from the conservative romances that the Catholic Church would give their blessings to. Not all love stories happily end with the first kiss. Some actually begin (and sometimes abruptly end) with a night of steamy intoxicated sexual intercourse. Garcia-Molina fluently communicates that motivation for the most part. She has her characters copulating without the blessings of an official relationship. Their coffee breaks hardly involve caffeine, just intense amounts of lust and sexual attraction. In a way, Garcia-Molina has successfully created celluloid-bound lovers who not only have romantic hearts but also working hormone-producing gonads.
Unfortunately, the demands of marketability prevents the film from truly being about men and women whose romantic escapades have been paved through one night stands and no-strings-attached agreements. Unofficially Yours eventually succumbs to formula. Explanations are snatched from thin air, rationalizing the behavior of the lovers, making it seem that traumatic past relationships are needed to develop a healthy hunger for sex. Of course, these explanations are there to lead towards the inevitable conclusion of the lovers establishing the so-called norm, abandoning whatever curious arrangement that had kept their libidos sufficiently satisfied for months.
Surely, Unofficially Yours is hardly successful in initiating something new within the stagnant supply of romantic comedies from the mainstream studios. The film is still in the vein of all the romances that came before it, whether those romances involved virginal teenyboppers or problematic yuppies. The core message about love and the contagious giddy feeling one gets from relating to that love remain the same. The only difference is that Unofficially Yours is sprinkled with more sex scenes.
The innovation of the entire rom-com formula however is not the point of the film. It is charm and the guiltless enjoyment one derives from that manufactured charm. Truth be told, Garcia-Molina gives that formula and the movie studio that swears by that formula the credibility they desperately need. She crafts these escapist gems by making most of those silly things called love teams, unmindful of any pretense or artistic ambition, removing at least partially the bad taste of falling completely for a film whose only real value is just to entertain.
Unofficially Yours is just immensely entertaining. Mackie (John Lloyd Cruz) is a dentist-turned-journalist who had a very memorable one-night stand with a very beautiful woman in Bali. That very beautiful woman turns out to be Ces (Angel Locsin), his mentor in his new job as a journalist. They resume their sexual trysts, with the agreement that there are absolutely no strings attached and that they are forbidden to fall in love with each other. Mackie however starts to fall for Ces, whose hardened exterior slowly but surely soften as Mackie starts wooing her with his genuine niceness.
Garcia-Molina makes most of the resources she’s provided. Perhaps the biggest of these resources are her leads, Cruz and Locsin. From Close to You (2006) to Miss You Like Crazy (2010), Garcia-Molina has molded Cruz’s onscreen persona as the man most women want their boyfriends to be and most men want themselves to be. By utilizing Cruz’s less-than-perfect physique, evocative eyes, and considerable acting talent, she has created for Cruz a vulnerability that feels more genuine than anything else in the fantasies his characters thrive in. In Unofficially Yours, Cruz simply enunciates what makes him such a charming lead. Locsin, on the other hand, complements Cruz’s overt appeal by being less animated, more subtle.
Garcia-Molina also taps into pop culture, creating a romance whose most fantastic elements are what make it irresistibly relatable. The characters sing pop songs to each other, revealing the unabashed sentimentality that these films thrive on. Garcia-Molina sufficiently understands that there is no point to withholding the goods that the films that she makes should peddle. She just dishes out everything, from the parade of quotable swoony lines to the gimmicks that are there purely for their pleasurable consequences, unhindered except by good taste. Garcia-Molina acknowledges the confines of her craft. She neither overreaches nor underachieves, creating a film that despite its lack of ambition and failure to push the envelope as advertised is more than forgivable for its many faults because the delights and charms it provides are too plenty and sometimes profound to ignore.
Their love’s on a rush. Eugene (Sam Milby), a shoe designer who insists on always being on top of his game, is always on the go. Raffy (KC Concepcion), on the other hand, is making what remains of her life count. They meet in an adventure camp. They fall in love, forcing Eugene to finally admit defeat and allowing Raffy to touch one more life before her predictable demise.
Cathy Garcia-Molina’s Forever and a Day suffers from a bad case of extreme tastefulness. It is unfortunate that Garcia-Molina, who almost always supplants the mainstream imprints of her films with subtle inventiveness and distinctive charm, seems powerless to the dullness of the film’s unfortunate script. It is a dullness that is only worsened by dialogue that seems to belittle the complexities of the human condition. Everything, from something as banal as white water rafting to something as sensitive as cancer and death, is utilized to neatly wrap a narrative that trivializes life for commercial purposes.
Despite being overindulgent in parts with certain sequences feeling longer than they should be, the film is fortunately well-made. The film waddles through with beautifully shot passages, convincingly acted exchanges, and adeptly directed scenes. Milby makes up for his stilted line delivery with consistency. Concepcion, on the other hand, gives an adequately affecting performance, as she conveys a vulnerability that is quite pleasantly surprising, especially since it comes from her. Sadly, the film overflows with needless support, effectively turning the film into a messy ensemble instead of something more intimate, something more sincere.
Ultimately, there’s not enough humor to add levity to the drama. There’s not enough honesty to temper the bad taste having the pain of death be reduced into a gimmick of an ending. Love, sprinkled with a bit of class struggle, of growing-up angst, of amnesia, used to be the lone resource for these manufactured escapist trifles. Now, death, with its appurtenant emotions filtered from it, is utilized and as a result, cheapened to cater to market demands. The resulting drama is so neatly concluded, so courteous and gregarious to its audiences that it defeats the entire purpose of expanding the grasp of the mainstream to tackle the most real and most certain of the many realities and certainties of life.
Cathy Garcia-Molina’s My Amnesia Girl has all the trappings of detestable formula. Like all of the romantic comedies that preceded it, the ones that have given Star Cinema the ill-repute of dumbing down its followers with rehashes of the same story, the film seems to be relying solely on kitsch, on star power, on everything artificial. There is no denying the film’s use of kitsch. In fact, the film is quite unabashed with it, with characters strangely enveloped by a culture of love reigning supreme over everything else. It is adamantly unpretentious, relishing on the obvious fact that it has in its service of fun an abundance of cute and hip. It does not aspire anything more than to recharge its audience’s thirst for spritely romance, the one that is less attached to reality, the one that mines on the mysteries of fate to add magic to it. In other words, My Amnesia Girl is Grade-A fluff. It fulfills everything that a mainstream romantic comedy should do. Much more, it skirts away from genre revision or experimentation, to delight of the studio that bankrolled its existence.
Miraculously though, the film, with its refreshing lack of pretenses of achieving more than momentary delights that is expected of a romantic comedy of mainstream sensibilities, does actually more than fulfilling the basic goals of the films of its genre. Somewhere along the way, amid the near redundant exchanges of witty pick-up lines, against its need to only delight, against its fate as a tool for escape that is to be solely for enjoyment, the film develops a beautiful heart that thankfully aches, although quite subtly, more than it delights.
Apollo (John Lloyd Cruz), pick-up artist extraordinaire, met Irene (Toni Gonzaga), a photographer, in a speed-dating event. While Irene attended the event only to document it, she ended up enamored by Apollo’s undeniable charms and wit. The seemingly perfect relationship suddenly and unexpectedly ended when on their wedding day, Apollo did not show up, leaving Irene irreparably heartbroken. When the two serendipitously meet in a grocery, Irene concocts a lie and pretends to be suffering from amnesia, therefore, removing all memories of Apollo and his failure to marry her. Apollo, believing Irene’s lie, takes the supposed clean slate to undo everything he has done to her and make her fall for him like the first time. The two become inseparable again, but are now faced with the impending repercussions of their second chance at love be revealed as by-products of Irene’s vengeful grand lie.
The story, written by Jade Castro whose masterful Endo (2007) situated a poignant love story in the middle of temporary contractual employment, hinges on a ludicrous proposal that men can be so drowned in love and guilt that amnesia, which only happens in unimaginative telenovelas and is highly unlikely in reality, has become instantly believable. Garcia-Molina, however, manages to distract from the implausibility of the premise by creating a film that is as self-aware of its contrivances as the characters are self-aware of their love-addicted attitude in life. The performances by Cruz and Gonzaga are expectedly charming, especially during the film’s lighter moments. However, during the moments where the film bleeds with emotions, Cruz and Gonzaga communicate those emotions with convincing conviction that is impossible not to get swayed into their dilemma and be affected with much more than just the cheap thrills that is usually associated with Star Cinema’s star-studded romances.
The film’s last scene, made funny by the trademark exchanges of witty one-liners that extend up to the end of the end credits, is actually quite bittersweet. Sure, the lovers end up together, as expected in any romantic comedy produced by Star Cinema. However, there is no assurance, no previous revelation, that fate’s cruel retort to Irene’s crueler lie, a lie that has produced so many beautiful things that it seems more alluring than the truth, has been resolved. We only see the lovers in satisfied bliss of being together, not knowing exactly whether the memories, good and bad, are there with them in their modest celebration. Whether Garcia-Molina knows it or not, with My Amnesia Girl, she has made a film that transcended the limiting bounds of formula filmmaking without breaking them. I’m crossing my fingers, but there might be hope yet for the mainstream.
(Cross-published in Twitch. First published in Philippine Free Press.)
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High-Cholesterol Romance A Review of Cathy Garcia-Molina's Miss You Like Crazy By Francis Joseph A. Cruz
Watching a Star Cinema-produced romance is comparable to eating a McDonald's hamburger. The two activities, depending on one's tolerance for junk food, elicit one predictable response: momentary elation. Morgan Spurlock, in his hilarious yet disturbing documentary Super Size Me (2004), has taught us that the McDonald's burger is specifically engineered to be elating enough to be addictive. Star Cinema makes romances like McDonalds makes burgers. The film studio follows a strict formula, putting together the most ideal of love teams in the most un-ideal of romantic relationships with the most magically conceived of happy endings. The result is assured box-office success. The result of that result is a stubborn and artistically-numbing adherence to the formula.
If Star Cinema romances are McDonald's burgers, then director Cathy Garcia-Molina is arguably the most effective fry cook in the studio's roster of fry cooks which includes Laurenti Dyogi (And I Love You So (2009), tepid and underwhelming), Rory Quintos (Love Me Again (2009), overindulgent yet inconsequential), Jose Javier Reyes (When Love Begins (2008), frustratingly cluttered), and Jade Castro (My Big Love (2008), disappointing and uneven), among many others. Her effectivity, I guess, stems from the absolute lack of resistance to the mechanicality of her role in these productions. She understands the studio’s goal of profit, accedes to the studio’s restrictive processes, and proceeds to create delightful farces that only reinforce a cultural need for escape. In other words, she does what a fry cook does best: flip burger patties, toast burger buns, and prepare a hamburger that comes closest to perfection.
Her films, from the portion she directed in Bcuz of U (2004), a triptych of bubbly but inconsequential love stories, to A Very Special Love (2008), a fluffy and admittedly enjoyable unlikely romance between an ordinary employee and her rich, handsome yet difficult boss, are all charming confections, delicious enough to make you forget, even for just about an hour, that outside the darkness of the theaters, there are outstanding bills to pay, nagging wives to please, and other pressing problems to face. Perhaps Garcia-Molina’s most charming film is still You Are The One (2006), an undemanding but colorful story about a U.S. embassy official who is looking for his real parents and a government employee who is wrestling with self-confidence who become entangled in a whirlwind love affair that ends in an expectedly happy note. One More Chance (2008), Star Cinema’s attempt to expand its notion of romantic relationships to include something as banally realistic as break-ups, the emotional pain it induces to ex-lovers, and the sacred three-month rule, signaled Garcia-Molina as a director who aside from visualizing the occasional joyful tingles of falling in love, can also communicate the pangs of a recent heartache.
Miss You Like Crazy, Garcia-Molina’s latest, is just another addition to the director’s list of near-perfect burgers. While it is entertaining and at times, intriguing, it remains unremarkable probably because nothing, with the exceptions of the little tweaks in the formula-formed narrative and the out-of-the-country setting, differentiates it from any of the director’s previous works.
Alan (John Lloyd Cruz), who is falling out of love with his controlling girlfriend (Maricar Reyes), initiates a love affair with Mia (Bea Alonzo), a not-so-sassy girl he meets during his daily commutes aboard the Pasig River ferry. As it turns out, Alan and Mia’s irrefutable connection (which apparently erupts into an impromptu lovemaking session inside Alan’s rustic unfurnished riverside abode) is no match to fate. A few years later, the two ill-fated lovebirds meet again, this time, in Kuala Lumpur. Alan remains hopeful that he will be able to find Mia, fix the mistakes of the past, and win her back into his arms. Mia, on the other hand, has a loving boyfriend (Gerald Hans Isaac). Despite the flurry of lovely emotions (as cinematically represented by Erik Santos’ baritone suddenly bursting to the tune of I Miss You Like Crazy to accompany the two leads’ reunion beneath the metaphoric Petronas Towers) that immediately come into play with the acknowledgment that a fragment of that complicated love affair still survives, it seems that human effort (we later learn that Alan has been visiting and revisiting Kuala Lumpur just to search for Mia) is still powerless to fate. In fact, all that Alan had to do was to wait, and save himself from the aches, stress, and frustrations of doing everything for nothing.
Fate does not leave a lot of room for shocks and surprises. With fate as the primary motivator of all its love stories, Star Cinema is unabashed about the predictability of its film offerings. After all, there is comfort in predictability. In a country where the norm is discomfort, comfort sells. Thus, McDonald’s, Star Cinema and other similar peddlers of shallow comforts do well in this country. They offer what reality can’t, a release, no matter how temporary, from the unpredictability of life. Having tried my best to rationalize why Star Cinema films do so well and accept the fact that there is absolutely nothing I can write or do to force a corporation to steer away from what gives it the most profit, I still hope to see a Star Cinema romance that would tackle unfated love. Truth be told, burgers, no matter how masterful the fry cook cooks them, are still junk food. I believe the same goes for movies.
(First published in Philippine Free Press, 20 March 2010)
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As it turns out, You Are the One (2006) made considerable money for Star Cinema. The team-up of director Cathy Garcia-Molina with her two newfound stars Sam Milby and Toni Gonzaga proved to be a genuine gold mine for the film studio that within a few months, a follow-up is released. With a stable of new talents (mostly from their reality TV show) who are waiting to be given projects, it seemed wise to come up with a film that will feature more characters and more derring-do's than their previous effort.
You Got Mehas an essentially different mood, a lot more serious and more melodramatic. While You Are the One has a whimsical view of the Philippines' woes and ticks, You Got Me is much more straightforward and foregos the atmospheric charm that made the previous effort so vastly enjoyable.
Kevin (Milby) and Moe (Gonzaga) are cops. Their precinct seems to belong to an alternate universe wherein Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's promise of a strong republic was actually serious and not just for show. For one, Kevin is an IT and surveillance specialist while Moe plays a one-woman police force (regular cop/SWAT team-member/undercover agent). I'm aware that there are precincts with IT departments but that's really not a norm. The precinct is unnaturally clean with no sign of corruption, crab mentality, inutility, or other real problems of the Philippine police force. The prisoners are also treated with respect and kindness; enough for one of the prisoners, a petty criminal named Caloy (Zanjoe Marudo), to risk courting stern Moe.
With such a Utopian set-up, the only natural consequence is for the cops to worry about their affairs of the heart. A love triangle slowly boils (perhaps too slowly) in the midst of all the poorly directed action sequences and Milby's failed attempts to speak Tagalog without the distinct American twang (the writers do try to explain why Milby's character can't speak straight Tagalog by claiming he is from Cotobato where the dialect is Visayan, but that doesn't explain why his Tagalog accent is more Americanized than Visayan).
It is a hard stretch of imagination the film's writers, actors, and Garcia-Molina are convincing their audiences to make. It reminds me of Johnny To's romantic comedies (like My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (2002)or Turn Left Turn Right (2003); not really his forte but he makes them competently enough to be enjoyable) without the assured execution or the distinct charm. Here, everything feels so manufactured: the chemistry, the far fetched plot, the silly action set pieces, the clumsy portrayals. Having seen You Are the One, a film that is just surprisingly and genuinely cute and fresh, this is just so much of a letdown.
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I caught this one on cable television. I've heard some good stuff about this rom-com, but easily dismissed it as part of the hype machinery Star Cinema (or any other Filipino film studio, for that matter) utilizes to quickly recoup investments (yes, film studios are getting very creative in promotions as the film industry here is on the verge of extinction from cutthroat competition by Hollywood). Surprise surprise! The film is actually quite good.
The plot is simple enough: Will (toothpaste model-turned-reality television star-turned-matinée idol Sam Milby) is an employee in the American embassy in Manila who denied the visa application of Sally (singer-turned-host-turned-film star Toni Gonzaga), an employee of the local statistics office. It turns out the Will is also looking for his biological parents who gave him up when he was a baby. The tides turn when Will is now under the whims of Sally's office when the former starts searching for his birth certificate. From the census office, to the slums of Tondo, to the buried towns in Pampanga, the two start a romantic relationship that gets tested by their own individual dilemmas.
It's not the formulaic plot that gets the film going, but Cathy Garcia-Molina's astute direction. She finds whimsical in dire situations. While the late Lino Brocka, and his successors, would've made grave drama about the living conditions of Tondo, Garcia-Molina finds gems of human ingenuity. The rooftop of a squalid apartment becomes filled with colorful tents and bright umbrellas that shield gamblers and afternoon drunkards from the gaze of the sun; two buildings are connected by a string that allows laundry to be brought to and fro; women drag their children like a hen dragging her set of chicks. It is that unexplainable cosmos of survivors and their survival techniques that the Americans (in this case, Will) would never understand; and that's what Garcia-Molina forwards so wonderfully.
The film's romantic getaway happens in Pampanga, the province that was buried by a mixture of ash and mad (called lahar) by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. While other filmmakers squeeze the melodramatics of tragedy created by that natural catastrophe (like Mel Chionglo's Lahar (1996) or more recently, Brillante Mendoza's Kaleldo (Summer Heat, 2006)), Garcia-Molina paints the buried towns with gratifying color, turning them into one grandiose carnival. The setting is beautiful enough to be the central set piece for Will and Sally's blossoming love affair, as cued by the titular song heard in the background as the couple swoon in the rain.
Garcia-Molina distinguishes the clear-cut yet dull lifestyle of Will from the seductive chaos of Sally's life (complete with her two best friends: a standard gay sidekick (Gio Alvarez) and lovelorn internet dater (Eugene Domingo)). Their workplaces spell out bureaucracy but the professionally boring straightness of the U.S. Embassy feels very clinical as compared to the crowd-infested yet always pleasant (something I wish were true in real life) madness of the statistics office. It is that allure that tempts Will to re-discover himself and open up to the possibilities of taking part in it.
That run-of-the-mill ending of all romantic comedies wherein the male lover chases after his female lover (or vice versa) which is always against time, circumstance, or calamity is pumped up by Garcia-Molina and her team of imaginative writers, made distinctly Filipino by an adherence to exaggeration and over-the-top histrionics. This time, it works mostly because Garcia-Molina has consistently made it work ever since the first scene where time-tied Sally hilariously un-knots a traffic jam to the real, from ridiculous and enjoyable party-poverty in Tondo to the half-buried yet still habitable houses of Pampanga. It's a string of fascinating sequences and all of them are genuinely enjoyable. I do not kid.
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