If I were to write about love...

If I were to write about love, how would I do it?

Like the characters of Rocco Nacino and Miles Ocampo in TBA Studios’ Write About Love, the former an experienced writer knowledgeable about falling in and out of love, and the latter a beginner not quite familiar with affairs of the heart, I would let myself be guided by Ricky Lee’s Trip To Quiapo: Scriptwriting Manual while I listen to the dictates of my heart.

In the film directed by Crisanto B. Aquino, Rocco and Miles’ characters are tasked by the producers to revise Miles’ screenplay about the joys and pains that lovers Joyce (Yeng Constantino) and Marco (Joem Bascon) are going through, in the process seeing their (Miles and Rocco’s characters) own lives reflected in those of the people they are breathing life into.

As Ricky Lee wrote in his Manual, there are three ways to go to Quiapo — you can take a jeepney direct to the place, take a longer route by circling around other places, or find a road not usually trodden. So much like how a love story rises to peaks of ecstasy and drops to depths of despair before, hopefully, reaching a happy ending.

As expected, Joem acquits himself as Marco with the casual facility that he has shown in his previous films but the big surprise is acting newcomer Yeng Constantino who breezes through the challenges of role like a thoroughbred, so infectious, especially when she’s pouring her emotions into songs. The two are truly deserving of the Best Supporting Actor/Actress awards, two of the eight won by the movie which is one of the eight official entries in the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF).

You can’t help but sympathize with the characters, all four of them, as they cope with the “storms” in their lives — Rocco with a lost love, Miles with her parents’ split-up, and Joem and Yeng as they try to hold on, holding together amidst the forces threatening to break them up.

Jerrold Tarog’s musical score (also MMFF-awarded) helps a lot in intensifying the characters’ emotions. Ikaw Ang Akin, awarded Best Original Song written by Aquino and performed by Yeng, beautifully expresses the gist of the love story within a story.

You come out of the cinema feeling good, feeling light and feeling relieved that Joyce and Marco have neatly survived the pleasures and perils of love.

It’s a brilliant idea for the movie’s scriptwriters (Aquino and Janyx Regalo, also MMFF awarded) to make the storytellers and the story characters seated together on a bench at the park, with their backs to the camera as it zooms out to a happy ending.

Write About Love is still showing in some theaters maybe near you. Catch it while you still can. It’s one movie you shouldn’t miss. MMFF ends Jan. 7.

(For more updates, photos and videos, visit www.philstar.com/funfare or follow me on Instagram @therealrickylo.)