In My Life, a Star Cinema production. Directed by Olivia Lamasan. Written by Raymond Lee, Senedy Que, and Olivia Lamasan. Starring Vilma Santos, Luis Manzano, and John Lloyd Cruz.
1. Something is wrong with the sound. The movie is loud, as in Michael Bay loud, but with the tinny maximum treble quality we associate with stereos in jeepneys. We’re used to the relentless overscoring of Star product, but do the actors have to yell at us too?
2. The cinematography is ugly. Everything has a blue-green tint. It looks like those cheap Hong Kong gangster movies of the 70s. They had an excuse: they were cheap Hong Kong gangster movies from the 70s. This one is a big-budget Star Cinema production starring ABS-CBN’s biggest movie asset John Lloyd Cruz and The Vilma Santos. For starters, they could afford to shoot in New York City instead of pretending Makati is Manhattan. So you fly everyone to NYC, stick around for months, and you decide to scrimp on the filters and diffusers? It does not compute.
3. Vilma Santos seldom appears in movies anymore, so when she does it is an event. In My Life is a good choice because she is allowed to act her age. Her character Shirley Templo (great name) is cute but frequently unsympathetic and even irritating, the way fussy old people who are set in their ways, who are resistant to anything new and never admit their own mistakes, are irritating. A human being! Wow.
But she is still Ate Vi so there will be dancing. The bagel guy, though: too ancient. The extras: Please.
4. The story is plausible, and even when it veers towards weirdness it’s acceptable weirdness—things that do happen in real life. The characters are well-drawn, and it’s refreshing to see a Star Cinema project in which all the characters are not consumed by the main love team’s melodrama. For starters there is no love team as we know it. The primary relationship is between Shirley Templo and her son’s boyfriend played by John Lloyd Cruz.
It is also refreshing to see a mainstream Pinoy movie in which the mother of a gay man already knows he is gay and thinks she has accepted the fact. We are spared those corny “Where did I go wrong?” speeches.
5. Big gamble casting John Lloyd and Luis Manzano as the gay couple—the audience is used to seeing them pursuing or being pursued by girls. It is a measure of the audience’s openness that no one said “Eeeeee” or laughed during their scenes together. It helps that the two did not play it swishy. John Lloyd is pretty good—in the emotionally-charged scenes, he knows how to use his eyes. Luis Manzano moves his facial muscles too much.
6. Of course the dramatic confrontations are still too long, loud, talky, and overwrought. You know that cinematic convention where the camera pulls away from the emotional encounter as if the characters’ pain is too much to bear? Pinoy movies don’t observe that convention. According to the rules of Pinoy movies, the camera should swoop in until we can see the characters’ pores and flying spittle. Apparently the audience demands suffering up-close.
7. The tranny character named Hillary dresses like Michelle Obama.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
