Antoinette Jadaone's "Beauty in a Bottle" - In Pursuit of Beauty and Youth

Vilma (Assunta de Rossi) is a hotshot advertising creative director who has been in the business for 20 years.  When a new anti-aging product requires fresh ideas from progressive young minds, Vi's time-tested acumen is put to a test. Will she be as contemporary as brazen new rookie and younger colleague Tanya (Ellen Adarna) who's expected to clinch the Belo product? Her boss Santi (Carmi Martin) isn't promising her the account just yet.

Meanwhile, upcoming actress Estelle Suarez (Angelica Panganiban) is fighting a seemingly losing battle with the bulge. Her co-star Empress (Empress Schuck) is stealing the spotlight from her.

When Estelle is pitted against Empress for a lucrative product endorsement, it didn't even take the competition 5 minutes to clinch the deal. During Estelle's go-see/auditions, she is subjected to more embarrassment that reduced her to a shrinking mess. How will she grab the project from Empress' arrogant grasp?

Judith Madamba (Angeline Quinto) is an aggressive realtor, selling 10 units in six months. But her enterprising successes don't translate to her personal life. She's weighed down by issues of self-esteem. In fact, she feels she doesn't "fit" in the social circle of his boyfriend Pocholo's (Tom Rodriguez) wealthy family. She just wants to impress them so. In her sheer paranoia, she ends up making a fool of herself.  

Three disparate lives intersect in Antoinette Jadaone's rollicking "Beauty in a Bottle", a cinematic dissertation on people's penchant for physical beauty and corporeal perfection. While we aim to be paragons of pulchritude, we forget that we have limitations we need to embrace to be able to truly find happiness and contentment.

In brisk, effortless strides, the movie is both insightful and downright hilarious, reminiscent of the verve of Ishmael Bernal's "Working Girls" made 3 decades ago.

The movie is buoyed by its finger-snapping pace and exceptional performances from its zany cast, particularly Angelica Panganiban as the eternally insecure actress Estelle and Assunta de Rossi as the aging advertising executive Vilma. Panganiban's audition scene and her shooting sequences ("Come back to the young and beautiful you.") are nothing short of brilliant, and are testaments of Panganiban's indisputable versatility. Quite frankly, it's hard to think of someone else who can evenly shift from drama to comedy, with flying colors in both.

De Rossi displays impeccable comic delivery and timing as she rolls with the narrative punches. What have Assunta and Alessandra's parents been feeding the girls that turned these siblings into spectacular actresses, one wonders? Empress plays a deliciously scornful version of herself, and comes up with one the year's most illustrious cameos, the consummate rival to a magnificent Panganiban.

How did Angeline Quinto fare? Not so badly actually. Though visibly awkward in a few scenes, Quinto breezes through her role with wanton enthusiasm, valiant enough to take thespic risks. This, after all, isn't her forte. But with temperament written to suit her personality, it's hard to make a false move. This is Quinto's card to a legitimate acting career.

Framed by thoughtful "steps to attaining success" (Step 1 - Just say yes; Step 4.1 - Know your product; Step 10 - Research, research, research; Step 48 - Check on your competition; Step 28.1 - Be better than your competition; Step 39 - Savor your success), the movie percolates with winking charm and raillery. It is provocative, upbeat, and pokes fun on our misperceptions and insecurities. It allows scrutiny of our thoughts on beauty and youth. How far are we willing to pursue them? Do they guarantee success? Or happiness? The film also gathers some of contemporary cinema's most brilliant and dynamic artists: Chris Martinez, Whammy Alcazaren ("Islands", "Colossal"), Atty. Joji Alonso, and of course director Jadaone ("Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay").

This collaboration results into one of the year's most exuberantly exhilarating films. What's better? It screened to a good and receptive crowd. I like that. Great films deserve no less. This allows film makers to churn out more of quality cinema. As a paying audience, this is money well spent.

Gorgeous Tom plays Angeline's boyfriend Pocholo.

Born to Love You - Romantic Accidents, Cinematic Mishaps

Disaster strikes every time photographer Rex (Coco Martin) finds tour guide Joey (Angeline Quinto) in a room. In fact, Joey spells calamity in capital letters. She bungles important moments in wedding receptions, vomits on Rex’s lap, falls underwater from a moving boat, and even impulsively slaps the irascible photographer. Rex wants nothing to do with Joey, until a lucrative corporate account throws them together.

Rex needs the dough. Besides, this will keep his fledgling studio afloat. Moreover, he has urgent bills to pay, and this account is crucial to the survival of his studio. Meanwhile, Joey is counting on this project for more clamorous reasons: his indigent – but happy – family is short on cash. Electricity’s been disconnected at home. If things turn out fine, this project could send her to Korea where she plans on finding her biological father.  

After rescuing Joey from near drowning, their relationship evolves into something more amorous. The cat-and-mouse bickering soon turns into a more intimate relationship. Joey takes him home to meet her parents (she has a doting mother Dulce and a loving stepfather Tatay Yoyoy – played by Malu de Guzman and Al Tantay). While Joey opens her world to him, Rex is dismissive where his family is concerned. The burden of his past heavily straddles on his shoulders. When he was a child, his mother (Eula Valdez) packed her bags for a job overseas and never came back. What’s worse, she remarried, leaving Rex’s father (Tonton Gutierrez) a broken man. Fast forward to the present. Rex’s father is dead, and his mother’s new family moves back to Manila.

While Sylvia (Rex’s mother, Eula Valdez) tries hard to bridge the emotional chasm, Rex continues to withdraw himself away from his even-tempered stepfather (Albert Martinez) who’s an influential businessman. When Rex finds himself in a bind (he couldn’t pay his bills and his bank cheques bounce), he adamantly refuses their help. Things come to a head when he learns that he was, in fact, saved by the extended family he abhors. He makes a rabid escape oblivious of Joey’s pleas. Then a vehicular accident once more changes the course of events.

Director Jerome Chavez Pobocan's story moves with disjointed and uneven temperaments (yes, there are several here), fielding irrational characters with obvious affinity to mishaps. Moreover, the telenovela trappings of the back stories feel too contrived and manipulative, you might as well ride the roller coaster while they are piling up the narrative implausibilities.Why such discombobulating troughs and ebbs? The script is essentially a hodgepodge of formulaic strains admixed with a thousand and one dramatic contrivances. Let's throw in several ideas, they think. Some thing's bound to work, debah?. Well, it didn't!

Angeline Quinto fields an asperous performance. She traipses around in awkward, indeterminate moments, vacillating between the dramatic and the comic, but neither translates into anything vaguely sincere.      

Some scenes are even worse, like when she just stares blankly where there should be emotions. Let's take a line for example: "Nararamdaman mo ba ang sinasabi ng puso ko?" (Say what?) "Wag mong tingnan ang wala sa yo. Tingnan mo kung anong meron ka!" Heavy stuff, right? But Quinto ends up with nothing but an emphatic delivery devoid of emotions. You might as well get a kalabasa and make it talk!

Coco Martin does better, although he is likewise hobbled by a burdensome script and his impasse with the English language: "May is-tep pa-der ka na!" "Pers taym mo, Predie?" Even some of his angry lines end up too cumbersome to empathize with. It's easy to lose sympathy because you have an inkling that Rex's pathological grief could be mental illness more than heartbreak. Ang OA eh! He desperately needed help and when he gets it, he turns away, and even huffs like an ingrate!

The problem here is, there are too many scriptwriters tweaking the story, thus focus is lost on divergent concepts stirring the film into everywhere but a logical unraveling of events. There are 2 (or 3) main writers and 6 script consultants, yet they come up with this pedestrian story?! It's almost unfathomable that eight heads worked on this rubbish. Such artistic destitution is getting more indisputable by the second!

Is this romcom? Light romance? Musical? Heavy drama? Existential movie? Try checking all. When Rex is seen standing on a cliff, gazing at a golden sky, you somehow get goosebumps because you knew this was the protracted version of a coffee commercial: Para kanino ka ba gumigising sa umaga? You crash your car on boulders and all you could ask is this fallacious question?

Apparently, the dingbats at the Cinema Evaluations Board (CEB) were tickled pink by such delusions because they rated this a B! What is an impressionable and simplistic group of twats doing in a board that's supposed to pick out gems from theatrical weeds? But maybe this film needs its 50% rebate. After all, when I watched it on a weekend, at a very prime time 7 PM, there were only seven souls populating the huge Galleria cinema! If you were to believe the television hype, you would think there was a pandemonium crowd queuing for this cinematic detritus. Well, there's seven souls and myself. There is justice after all.

Coco Martin plays Rex Manrique

Angeline Quinto plays Joey: Can't even deliver a believable yawn!