A love story with a kilig effect

I usually don’t like films that try to draw out the giddiness in the moviegoer.

Star Cinema’s Now That I Have You is the kilig movie of the year, but- surprise, surprise – I enjoyed watching this film by Laurenti Dyogi. (The movie is rated B by the Cinema Evaluation Board.)

The movie’s plot is basically simple and no doubt capitalizes on the popularity of the love team of Bea Alonzo and John Lloyd Cruz. It opens with Bea, a call center operator, stalking regular MRT co-passenger John Lloyd because she has a terrible crush on him and thinks he is the man of her dreams. But after they are formally introduced to each other and fall in love, they begin finding faults with one another and are disillusioned. They break up, but before the fans go berserk, they make up in the most kilig manner you can imagine.

Predictable? You can actually smell the ending a few frames into the film. But then, this is a love story – no, not a tragic one – but a regular romantic affair that happens to most of us in this life. Yes, the story is predictable because this is about romance and as anyone who has already fallen in love knows, one can actually chart the ups and downs of a romantic relationship before the couple even jumps into it. It starts with both parties enjoying each other’s company (if possible, they want to be with each other 24 hours a day) until one gets suffocated and begins asking for space. They break up, they make up and that is the best part because they become sweet to each other again after that – until they go into another predictable cycle again.

This slice of reality is captured in the most realistic fashion in Now That I Have You. If I didn’t know that the script is by Jose Javier Reyes, I would have thought that the person who wrote the story is a young love-struck twentysomething still trying to combat acne. Even the dialogues (Joey Reyes’ strength as a writer) are so real, young and refreshing.

Laurenti Dyogi from his end translates the Jose Javier Reyes material magically on the big screen and obviously these two great minds make a good combination.

What is fascinating about the movie is that the story is really very simple – baduy even – but Joey Reyes and Laurenti Dyogi put little nuances snatched from every day life and the viewer sees a little of himself here and there all over the film and that can be quite entertaining.

Even the way Dyogi weaves his baton in his orchestration of the film’s technical elements points toward the direction that would infuse reality into this art of make-believe. (It’s just too bad that the dialogues are dubbed, but then, even that is not as disconcerting compared to other local films that don’t opt for live sound.) With the lighting, for instance, it’s really daylight that you see in the background (when the scene is supposed to happen during the day) in indoor shoots.

Even the production design by Elfren Vibar is meticulous and the best example is the house of Bea Alonzo, whose parents are socially conscious (her mother, Rio Locsin, had joined the NPA). Their house is done Filipino-style and you see this not only in the architecture, but also in their pieces of Vigan furniture. Her father Noel Colet and brother Cholo Escano are made to drink San Miguel beer – no, not necessarily as an endorsement, but because this is a Pinoy beverage.

Actually, the few times that the movie departs from reality is when character actor Jojit Lorenzo flits in and out of the film like a one-man Greek chorus playing different small parts (a security guard, a taxi driver, etc.) to serve as some sort of a deus ex machina. But even this is a nice touch to the film.

The people behind Now That I Have You clearly don’t really have great intentions of turning this project into a great film. The objective is simple: Create a movie that will make the viewers giddy and it succeeds, but – and this is the big but – only because it is hinged on a solid, thorough and well-written material. This and other little bonuses like crisp, funny dialogues and humorous scenes are what make the movie endearing to the audience.

And I appreciate the fact that not one of the pa-cute scenes in the movie gives the jaded viewers the goose bumps. Only shows you how each and every sequence had been carefully threshed out.

Like I said, I have very little patience for kilig movies. But now that I have seen Now That I Have You. (try that for a tongue-twister). I’ve discovered that at my age (and this is quite embarrassing) I still have room for a little giddiness in my life.