My Cactus Heart - Ephemeral Popcorn Romance

Sandy Macalintal (Maja Salvador) has long brushed off romance ever since her father has chosen to live a life away from their family. Sure, he would occasionally show up - a couple of times a year with his current girlfriend awkwardly tagging along. Sandy had to live with a mother (Rosanna Roces) who eternally pines for that day when her husband (Ricky Davao) would find his way back to the fold - where he belongs. Sandy is cautious. Though she entertains suitors, she would eventually nip these budding romances in the bud once they get too close for comfort. Might as well cut her impending and perceived loses before they harm her fragile heart, right?

Meanwhile, Carlo (Matteo Guidicelli) is gradually falling for his boss' daughter Sandy. He occasionally waits tables for a catering business - and moonlights as a singer for a band. He dreams for a lot of things: to visit the grave of her fallen mother (Pinky Amador) in Singapore and to earn a decent living; one that would approximate his worth in the eyes of Sandy who's upbeat and charming. In fact, she takes his breath away. Unfortunately for Carlo, Sandy's twice shy about romantic intimacy. She comes from left of center - and is even wary of her irrefutable attraction to the strapping lad. What's worse: Sandy is entertaining another suitor, Benedict (Xian Lim) who's a formidable competition. What becomes of Sandy and Carlo?



Director Enrico Santos comes up with a winsome formula reeking with frothy narrative embellishments. In fact, if you've seen the trailer alone, it would make you want to rush to the nearest cinema to watch it. The film has an adorable heroine who steals your heart even when she furtively denies affection: "No as in no" indeed! Moreover, it has a romantic consort brimming with asian-italian charm. Heck, even the third wheel's as delectable as a sophisticated version of tikoy and hopia and pansit. Xian Lim is a dashing milk curdler: he is tall, sexy, and looks at girls with earnest heed. The romantic broth couldn't be perfect, right?

But there's this quibble: remember the note for the anonymous soul mate that's meant to find its way back to you? If love was indeed such a fallacy, why rest your romantic faith on a carelessly placed note inside a guitar? Or inside a bottle? The idea feels incongruous to Sandy's apathetic ideas about relationship. If having ones heart broken turns you into a tumbleweed of disaster, then it's evident you don't deserve to be happy. No one deserves to get hurt, more especially if it's a deliberate or expedient strategem.

Maja Salvador is splendid like she's always been, her tongue in cheek rendition always uttered in exquisite comic cadence. Most everyone in the cast tries to duplicate her verve, but her leading men suffer in comparison. Beside Salvador, they appear lightweight... like eye candies - and cotton candy, lovely to gaze at, but they dissipate in the mouth within seconds, easily washing off in our gustatory senses forever.

"My Cactus Heart" is ephemeral pleasure. Everything feels part of an ingredient that, in the scheme of things, don't quite linger for long. Like chips, cotton candy or popcorn, you masticate on them - then you eventually forget the heady pleasures of partaking.


Darna and the art of checking out someone else's hygiene.

Sandy meets the overeager Benedict.


Maja Salvador: perfect


Matteo Guidicelli as Carlo


Xian Lim as Benedict. he is once again "introduced" in this film though he has appeared in Gil Portes' "Two Funerals". This gross overlook spells either ignorance (for not knowing) or arrogance (for not considering Xian's first film part of his resume).

Thelma - Getting Robbed Out of a Resolution

The conventions of storytelling is universal regardless of its medium: film, theatre, novel, even radio dramas and children’s fairy tales. Even non-linear works take on a basic framework because how else would one attain catharsis?

In Paul Soriano’s “Thelma”, the narrative follows a straight forward tack in telling the story, supposedly with emphasis on it not being a sentimental tale, i.e. “this isn’t drama,” reads many of its publicity pieces. This is labelled a “sports movie” by its makers - whatever the heck that means. Interesting then, right? Having laid that out, it’s a curiosity that in its effort to avoid being schmaltzy, it also fails to capture a sense of urgency where its “action” scenes were concerned. What’s even more pronounced is how this compulsion to explain their method is expounded under duress. “Thelma”, in its entire narrative flourish, is in fact melodrama! Anything related to sports takes a convenient backseat as the protagonist wallows in her own emotional conflict. This takes us back to the stages of storytelling. This is a didactic discourse on why “Thelma” eventually underwhelms.

Capsule

Tragedy forces Thelma (Maja Salvador) to drop out from high school. Her younger sister Hannah (Eliza Pineda) figured in a vehicular accident that wouldn’t have transpired had Thelma not insisted on taking the treacherous detour on their way home from school. Suddenly, the glimmer of hope that could have eventually given Thelma a way out of stark poverty has dimmed. And she is awash with guilt.

Floring, the mother, weaves blankets and sells them to a local merchant, but times are hard and business is far from brisk. Moreover, Floring’s failing health leaves her exhausted and unproductive. Aldo, the father, farms a little parcel of an otherwise cantankerous Ilocos soil. Floring and Aldo (Tetchie Agbayani and John Arcilla, respectively) look at their daughters' helplessness with resignation.

But Thelma has a gift. She sprints with lightning precision and in the process, floats like the wind. One day, she is summoned back to school. Thelma has been conferred an athletic scholarship that takes her to Manila. This allows her the opportunity to “earn” from her stipend, thus sending the same money to her impoverished family. But city life is a rat race from hell. Though Thelma gradually proves her worth in a succession of marathons, she has to brave some scornful rivals and her constant yearning for home. She also finds romance in a fellow athlete Sammy (Jason Abalos) who himself is desperate for immediate work to tide over the financial requirements of raising his 7 siblings and his parents.

One day, Thelma receives a call from her Auntie Marie (Sue Prado) informing her of her mother’s debilitating illness. She bawls her heart out. The camera pans over and around our sympathetic heroine. Floring takes Marie’s phone and emphatically insists: “Ipagpatuloy mo anak. Huwag kang tumigil tumakbo.”

And like a vehicle suddenly running out of gas, the incessant caterwauling suddenly ceases while the closing frame shows Thelma competing again. Was that it? Yun na yon?

The first thing that strikes you here is its exquisite camera work (Odyssey Flores), utilizing a color palette that’s mostly muted, imparting an almost poetic veneer to every framed composition. The film employs eye-popping vistas (the Bangui Windmills of Ilocos Norte, the stunning plains where Thelma would run, etc.) They employed cranes and even helicopters to capture the sprawling landscape where our protagonist trains and subsists. This was a production that clearly didn’t scrimp.

Maja Salvador fires up a lackluster character that’s mostly unsympathetic. In Maja’s quiet moments (a 10-second scene showing her wistfully gazing at the horizon – the windmills spinning at the foreground), Thelma comes alive and metamorphoses into a compelling character. Salvador is simply a thespic thunder that deserves to be watched. She has always had this silent power to summon sincerity, not to mention a lambent charm that’s hard to resist. Had she been less, I’d have snored heavily while I watched. Tetchie Agbayani blazes the screen in half her screen time, appearing tough and tender; but her succeeding scenes flounder patronizingly. And something has to be said about Eliza Pineda’s Hannah: she was annoying, you wanted to take her out to sea and drop her deep in the ocean to get over her miseries.

Now what went wrong?

Greek philosophers like Aristotle analyzed the Dramatic Structure because of the popularity of storytelling. In fact, the Filipino and Asian perspective on the Dramatic Structure have spawned works characterized by maudlinism; sappy conversations and explosive altercations caught on stage, in the pages of a novel, on celluloid.

This said structure is divided by German playwright Gustav Freytag into 5 parts (acts):

(a) Exposition. This provides the background details and information needed to understand the story; i.e. “problem” is introduced.

(b) Rising Action. This is where basic internal conflict is complicated by the introduction of related secondary conflicts, including various obstacles that frustrate the protagonist's attempt to reach his goal.

(c) Climax or the ”turning point”. This marks a change, for the better or the worse, in the protagonist’s affairs.

(d) Falling Action. This is the moment of reversal after the climax. The conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist unravels, with the protagonist winning or losing against the antagonist.

(e) Denouement, Resolution or Catastrophe. This is where conflicts are resolved, creating normalcy for the characters and a sense of catharsis, or release of tension and anxiety, for the audience (or “reader” if the work is a written piece).

In Paul Soriano’s “Thelma”, the story gradually pieces an exposition (poor family and a child’s athletic talent), then the narrative introduces the basic conflict (younger sister becomes a cripple; older sister feels guilt). Unfortunately, the Climax transpires when the main characters didn’t even see each other. This was one of the dullest climaxes I’ve ever encountered. Thelma gets her shrill dramatic moment while on the phone. After this magnanimous moment, everything goes downhill.

The “Falling Action” falls flat with face first. Denouement is served in the form of a single frozen scene of Thelma running another marathon. They even failed to procure an epilogue that would bring closure to our protagonist’s miseries. “Resolution” should conclude the “Falling Action” by revealing or suggesting the outcome of the conflict. But there’s not even a hint into the future. I personally felt robbed out of a conclusion, and I was distressing over the fact that I had to witness all those droll situations for an obscure dissolution? And as Maroon 5 insists, “There ain’t nobody who could comfort me. Oh yeah!” Yes, they forgot the finishing touch, the “release of tension and anxiety” – not even an “unsatisfactory” comeuppance. And since character development is mostly facile and thin, we leave the theatre feeling nothing. As the film closes its exposition, it conveniently reminds us: “This is based on true stories.” Stories!

If indeed this were reality based, the story teller was too lazy to update us what became of Thelma. Did she find a better life? Was following a dream worth giving up some personal liberties?

We don’t know. They forgot to tell us.

Miriam Defensor-Santiago in a Fishbowl

It must have been a daunting task portraying someone as lividly colorful as the lady senator whose verbal acuity compares to no one. And I have always admired her steely resolve and endless pursuit to justify her every endeavor. Not only is she painfully honest and incorruptible, she is also abrasively sensitive to a fault. But that's what makes this lady a cut above the rest!

Four actresses were tasked to portray her in the "Miriam Defensor-Santiago Story" (shown at ABS CBN) - from childhood to adulthood - Miles Ocampo (the child Miriam), Maja Salvador (the young teen Miriam), Julia Clarete (the collegiate Miriam) and Tessie Tomas (the adult Miriam). I was initially trepidant with this casting as these 4 actresses look so dissimilar. They couldn't even legibly pass as sisters. But as the narrative strain begins to unfold, I was caught with the story of a struggling girl born to an overbearing mother who couldn't take mediocrity sitting down!

We begin to understand Miriam's constant search for excellence, and why she is the way we know her. The drama series humanized the very public and caricaturish Miriam. And it breaks my heart seeing her grieve in public when her favorite child (who calls her "beautiful") commits suicide (supposedly because he couldn't get into UP Law School - as the telefilm suggests). As her constant struggle ebbs, she rationalizes her divine purpose. And if that gives her a degree of peace, I pray she succeeds in getting it!

What the show taught me for sure is that, despite Miriam's occasional delusions of grandeur and intolerance, she is one heck of a hard working and intelligent lady - and that she will probably be immune to this pervasive atmosphere of greed that pollutes our government and our society! And if we have several elections running tomorrow, I shall cast my vote on Miriam Defensor-Santiago - over and over again!

On point of performance, Tessie Tomas was almost spot on, although I was initially reluctant to watch her reduce the feisty senator into a stand-up act! But she was very effective. In fact everyone was! The best performance however was turned in by Julia Clarete who wore the senator's young persona like second skin! She was effusively sincere, her emotions palpable; too bad she is now reduced to the daily shenanigans of a frolicky "Eat Bulaga" when she could run rings around the likes of say, Marian Rivera, or Kris Bernal, or much of the gallery of stars that inhabit GMA-7. Maja Salvador was a curious choice to play teen Miriam. But her very short stint glowingly showcased how passionately Miriam wanted the love and acceptance of an overbearing mother (played by Jean Garcia - and later, Marita Zobel). When she looked at her mother, you could see a daughter's longing to snag her loving acknowledgment - that she indeed is a daughter worthy of her motherly love! Count on Maja to deliver the goods!

Tessie Tomas

Julia Clarete

Maja Salvador

Miles Ocampo