Sarah is aching for something new, something real

MANILA, Philippines - Love teams in Philippine movies mean a lot to producers and audiences.

For the producers, a good love team can translate into box-office hits.

A successful pair can translate into more following and for the stars, it means more commercial endorsements.

According to movie chronicler Mario Bautista, love teams in Philippine cinema made quite an impact from the ’20s to the ’30s with the love team of Mary Walter and Gregorio Fernandez (Rudy Fernandez’s grandfather).

In the ’30s and the ’40s, the love team of Rosa del Rosario and Leopoldo Salcedo was the toast of tinseltown followed by Elsa Oria and Ely Ramos, Lucita Goyena and Fernando Poe Sr.

From the ’40s to the ’50s, the love teams to beat were Corazon Noble and Angel Esmeralda, Carmen Rosales and Rogelio de la Rosa, Tita Duran and Pancho Magalona and on to the decades of Delia Razon and Mario Montenegro, Nida Blanca and Nestor de Villa, Gloria Romero and Luis Gonzales and into the ’60s most-loved pairs of Amalia Fuentes and Romeo Vasquez and on to Susan Roces and Eddie Gutierrez.

The love teams of the new millennium are dime a dozen and as always, the partners change faces and they still do good at the box-office.

The new love team to reckon with is Sarah Geronimo and Coco Martin who will appear in a new film called Maybe This Time, opening on May 28.

In the presscon announcing her latest starrer, Sarah told media men the first order of the day before shooting starts is to get to know her leading man. Here, she described her close collaboration with co-actors, notably with her leading man.

The singing actress rued a good and credible love team doesn’t just happen overnight. “Since this is our first team-up as a love team, my first work was to find ways to connect with my co-actor. Coco and I earlier worked together in none-movie projects and we have to build anew based on that first meeting. Now, I have to relate to him as a co-actor but the most challenging part is to relate as close as possible to his character as Tonio in another time and in another setting. This means you have to get to know your leading man inside and out and more importantly, get to know the character he is portraying.”

Coco said he is surprised at the work ethic of his leading lady and how she made it all easy for him. “Since this is our first time as a love team, I needed to get to know her quickly and know at once what she expects from her screen sweetheart. Sarah was a revelation. She is constantly concerned with the chemistry that will work and what will make the love team credible. She actually helped me relax and as a result, my acting on the set was real and spontaneous. In between the harutan and the landian on the set, I was stunned to see a new kind of aggressiveness in her.”

Coco was probably referring to a scene where Sarah gangs up on him and looking like a cool femme fatale determined to seduce him. But after pinning him down and running her hands on his face, she drops her line, “You badly need a facial.”

Even director Jerry Sineneng noticed the unusual rapport between the two who are always looking for something new and exciting to show their fans.

As the cliché goes: The love team is not resting on its laurels.

As it is, Sarah has moved on from acting for her screaming fans and is ready to show them her new persona as an actor.

At this phase of her singing and acting career, Sarah is aching for something real and ennobling about her chosen craft.

She admitted to doing early kilig films that thrilled her fans and left her looking for something closer to her art and soul. The screaming of her fans she interpreted as a sign of acceptance. But there is a little space in heart that tells her that she can still do better.

When you are young and gullible, she intimated earlier, you tend to imitate some singers, their famous stage acts and opt for something easily digestible.

But late last year, she confessed to me she wanted to find her inner voice, something true to herself and something she can hold on to with pride.

She has learned to rewind her own private life and freeze something helpful to her character. She likes it that her co-actor comes from a simple family with simple dreams. “What I learned from my own life and seeing other people find a way out from their romances that didn’t work, all these I used to define the character I am portraying in this film.”

Like it or not, Sarah’s art and life merge in her new film.

Her fans screamed when she told me, “Yes, sir, 95 percent of my real life is in this film. What I went through with my first love found reflection in this film. But this film is not about me. It is about my character Steph Asuncion who fell in love with Tonio Bugayong (Coco).”

Indeed, talk of life imitating art.