point and counterpoint

And I Love You So bor­rows its premise from a few famil­iar movies: how to cope with the loss of a beloved, with the help of the deceased lover’s soul. We need not look to Hol­ly­wood as this premise shows up on at least one Fil­ipino movie: Honey, Nasa Lan­git na ba Ako? fea­tur­ing Janno Gibbs and Regine Velasquez. While the lat­ter is a com­edy infused with some fan­tasy, the for­mer (and the topic of this review) is grounded on real­ity, with most of the dia­logues between the departed and the bereaved hap­pen­ing on another, more pri­vate space.

The essence of the plot can be sum­ma­rized  in just a few lines that was deliv­ered by the lead char­ac­ter (Bea Alonzo); drunk and morose, she com­pares her­self to the other wid­ows in her focus group: “buong buhay nila, kasama nila yung mga asawa nila. Ako, limang buwan lang.” This, all hap­pen­ing while vent­ing it all out in front of her ini­tially dis­in­ter­ested ten­ant who, just like all Star Cin­ema romances, falls in love with her, gets involved in a big dis­agree­ment, sep­a­rates with her and—again, just like all Star Cin­ema romances—finds his way back to her and gets a happy end­ing. (Come to think of it, when did a Star Cin­ema romance not end with a happy end­ing? Except for that Kris­tine Hermosa-Aga Mulach movie, where he dies in the end.) In other words: bor­ing, just like Bea Alonzo’s char­ac­ter who loses to hold on to the viewer’s empa­thy after hav­ing one too many rants about being a young widow.

Sam Milby and Derek Ram­say par­layed their roles sat­is­fac­to­rily, with Sam Milby get­ting more points for deliv­er­ing a cool, dis­in­ter­ested char­ac­ter (although he still needs a lot of work in get­ting his Taga­log right and believ­able). Bea Alonso appears too young to han­dle the demands of a very mature role such as in this one. It was as if you were still see­ing her in a prime­time telen­ov­ela, where the demands for act­ing is tol­er­a­bly lower because of time con­traints. Nikki Gil is an inter­est­ing addi­tion to the case, although her char­ac­ter has been under­de­vel­oped by the movie’s writ­ers in order to jus­tify her being con­cerned about fam­ily matters.

One final word: the supposedly-controversial “love scene” turned out to be a dud. It was just a sim­ple kiss­ing scene. If you went to see the movie just for this, you’ll just end up dis­ap­pointed. Same with the scenes of Bea wear­ing a two-piece swimsuit—and while I’m at it, with the scenes of her wear­ing night­ies with thin fab­ric. Expect no shocks there, not even surprises.

RATING: 3 out of 10.