Dream on

Define hopeless romantic. “A person who is in love with (the idea of) love,” says the Urban Dictionary. “They believe in fairy tales. They’re not to be confused with being stalkers or creepy…” Ummm…  we are not creepy, aca-scuse me! Neither are we stalkers. We are idealists, sentimental dreamers, and can be quite fanciful once you get to know us. God knows how much I’d choose Picture Perfect over Pitch Perfect any day.

I say “we” (yes, oui) because I fall under this rare category of the 20-something. Where most have become growingly pessimistic, realistic, and pragmatic in matters of taste, love, and what it means to be alive in the 21st century, I’ve remained a romantic. Look at Girls. Pragmatists like Hannah Horvath will tell you how it is but hopeless romantics like say, Shoshanna, will insist on how it should be — unicorns, slow motion running in the field, and background going hazy à la Never Been Kissed.

I say this because I was reminded again of just how much of a hopeless romantic I am after catching a commercial screening of Sana Dati, a film by Jerrold Tarog that won Best Film at the recent 2013 Cinemalaya Film Festival. In the movie, a woman named Andrea (played by Lovi Poe) stalls her big wedding when a mysterious videographer named Dennis (played by Paulo Avelino) shows up and activates something in her that she last felt when her great love Andrew (played by Benjamin Alves) was still alive. (He passed away due to heart complication.)

The film moves forward and backward through time as it tries to understand the distress of Andrea on her big day — why she is lackluster and seemingly bereft of happiness as opposed to most blushing brides. We discover later on that Dennis is Andrew’s younger brother.

Like some serendipitous act of fate, he is hired to shoot her pre-nup video before she walks the mile with Robert (played by TJ Trinidad). A moment presents itself at the end of the film for Andrea and Dennis to escape together after the time they spent on the rooftop. For Andrea, if only to rekindle the love that she had for Dennis’ big bro. For Dennis, well, he just wanted to get to know the woman his brother loved. Alas, Andrea pushes through with the wedding, leaving her to a life of misery with someone she could never really love, at least as much.

The film is no rom-com. No light bulb moment here, with music that crescendos to a head-shaking Hollywood kiss. It’s an anti-romance narrative, which is why the feeling that dawned on me afterwards was so unsettling, I couldn’t help but break into tears. “What the hell was that?” my thoughts echoed. As emotions subsided, I felt — though unlikely, Andrea should’ve run away with Dennis and not proceeded with the wedding.

She should’ve done a Rachel McAdams in The Notebook who left the princely James Marsden for a rugged Ryan Gosling. After all, Ryan was her true love. And if you have a true love, you have to fight for him. In the same vein, Andrea shouldn’t have settled for Robert, if only for the security. She wasn’t ready. Or else, she would’ve been a blushing bride on her wedding day. And while her true love has gone into the afterlife, maybe her next true love was somewhere in those buildings as she looked on from the rooftop. Maybe it was Dennis. She just had to be patient — a lesson that most 20-somethings in the age of social media need to learn. Maybe her true love would come when she least expected it. Mine did.

Sana Dati’s “happily never after” message is a reality check that jars you as you leave the theater, a specter that haunts. The feeling is reminiscent of that Girls episode in season two where Hannah meets the character of Patrick Wilson, a modern-day prince charming who could have given her everything. By the end of it, she walked away from his apartment, the life it represented, and back into the arms of the city. Why? He was so perfect! Are you stupid, Hannah?

For her, it wasn’t about perfect. It was about Adam who would run out of his apartment, topless, to come to her rescue. I remember crying a lot during this scene not because of missed opportunity but because as Hannah’s time in the steam room revealed, while she was a pragmatist, there was still a part of her that believed in true love and happy endings. She wanted to be happy, even if her 20-something DNA would always prevent her from being happy. After all, even pragmatists watched Disney in their youth, or believed in Santa Claus. The romantic in them must’ve gotten washed away in the jadedness that New York and modernity brings out of people. After all, Oscar Wilde wrote, “To be modern, one must be without a soul.”

Maybe it’s that, while I am always being told by friends that I am one of the last remaining people who still appreciates certain things, it is also that I am a believer in the act of believing. I believe when no one else believes, and that fuels me. My reaction to the movie was my subconscious trying to resist being brainwashed by Tarog’s assault on love, which he views in the film as myth. Love is not a myth, at least not to the hopeless romantic. It’s life fuel. It’s real. Love is in the details. It was probably somewhere in the movie too, until it settled for that 20-something realistic end.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a good film. On a good day with a shitload of endorphins, I’d see it again, if only to walk away not depleted but breaking even. But leaving the theater feeling my hopeless romantic self being sucked away, or chastised, says a lot about how, in your 20-something years, and for most of my peers, life isn’t about finding the happily ever after anymore. It’s about living happily in the now, and making the most out of every moment. After all, happiness doesn’t last. It never does. #Jadedness.

Andrea settled for Robert because at the end of the day, he loved her anyway. Maybe at some point, she’d love him too. But like Hannah Horvath who managed to take out the trash before going back to her self-sabotaging ways, at least Andrea brought herself to move on. She made a choice to move on. That’s a start. Whether or not they stay together is left to the stars. Thankfully, we don’t have to piece together that constellation. If you ask me, I’d rather she left him and took to the city in search for her true love. I’m certain he’s out there. In matters of taste, love and what it means to be alive in the 21st century, you’ve got to have faith.