Nah, The Matrix is way too cranial at his time (wrestling with a book like Einstein’s Dreams takes decidedly focused attention and exhaustive concentration that a thinking movie with lotsa wordplay – no, not even with Keanu in it – is totally out of the picture), The Phone (as an object of horror is never convincing – my heaving midnight caller will barf out), and My First Romance is just plain glucose (I don’t want a little mush suicide, thank you). And so it was…tada! Liberated.
After munching on words like "relative parallelisms," "celestial tangents," and "quango organisms" that gave me frequent trips to the thesaurus (if anybody would as much ask me to spell E-i-n-s-t-e-i-n, I’d swear I’d make him understand that "to every action, there is relative reaction" – and it won’t be pretty), I suddenly have this craving for something that won’t require thinking.
The movie stars Diana Zubiri, Ana Marie Falcon rechristened Francine Prieto (she reminds me there is a god, That’s Entertainment fizzled out where she was part of the Kuya Germs bunch of wannabes), Christian Vasquez, Rodel Velayo, Tuesday Vargas, Winston Elizalde and Reggie Curley under megman Mac C. Alejandre.
Artist Christian Vasquez (he does metal artsy stuff, think Gabby Barreto on a budget) dumped liberated Diana after catching her having a mouthful with a stranger. Seeing your girl sucking face with a good-looking fella isn’t only revolting, it brings you the questions: Is he as good-looking as I am? Does he kiss better than I do? Will I have a butt exposure in the next sequence?
Direk Mac takes our cue, the next reel got Christian getting it on with top-sales-executive-with-well-laid-plans Francine. Francine is ambitious – she wants a perfect job (she’s the No. 1 car sales executive because her clients get more exciting freebies – who needs pens, stationeries, wall clocks and other gifts-with-purchase stuff when you can get meatier extras?) and she wants a perfect family (her mom is a mistress).
She sees a primrose future with Christian ("Artist ka, nasa sales ako…we’ll have a wonderful future together!"). Christian, on the other hand, still loves Diana but since her appetite for sex needs industrial-strength Caladryl, he keeps up with Francine.
Not until they’ve decided to schedule the wedding that Diana had her nuts in tune, "Titiyakin kong hindi matutuloy ang kasal nyoh!" For after all the one-night-stands, the panty peek dance numbers on the ledge and a non-commitment relationship with Winston (who was so, uhm, natural at playing a dumb weirdo with a third leg between his thighs), Diana is still in love with Christian.
When everything turns futile, Diana cleans up her act by planting newspapers on the bathroom’s floor, sits next to the Toilet Duck, then finally cuts her wrist (as if the utility people had foresight – "Direk, we don’t want messy blood stains on the floor…"). As a conscious effort to be aesthetically correct, Diana cuts her wrist with her heavily made up close-up and Ate Guy-size tear falling on one cheek. Hah! The scene got me laughing so hard that I was crying at risk of dehydrating!
But this I don’t understand. When one is tangled in a lovelorn situation like this, you only do either of two things: one, you do the ’90s thing – sue; and two, you write to Joe the Mango’s Love Notes.
Just like a battered Joan Collins novel with pages dog-eared to mark the juicy, saucy parts that spell, uhm, hormone lit you can catch the meaty scenes by the raunchy background music. Minimal butt cheeks are exposed, but the mammaries are memorable though short-lived.
Christian Vasquez saves the movie with his pelvic bone and a towel wrapped a millimeter away from his pubes. Francine Prieto as the perpetual virgin-by-choice is unconvincing with her a la Dumaguete Scandal scenes. Diana Zubiri may have the emotional depth of a lampshade, but she lights up the screen with her "bouncing" acts.
As for the rest of the cast, their characters are so irrelevant that you can totally cut them out from the story and still come up like it is – campish and sexy. You can take the movie in installments – buy a popcorn, have a Kitkat, do your business in the loo, score a second base three pointer with your date – and you wouldn’t miss the movie’s point. Because there isn’t any.
You may file the movie under Unforgettable but its drool quotient is enough to keep you moving in your seat. To its credit, Liberated causes minute trembles – but then again it might just be my hands misbehavin’.