WE FINALLY got to see ‘Five Breakups and a Romance’ in a mall theater last Friday night and we’re glad to see that the theater is more than half full in its second week of showing.
We saw it with our 14-year old granddaughter after her class at Quezon City Science High School and she also liked it.
She finds it very well acted by Alden Richards and Julia Montes.
And it’s true, both Alden and Julia deliver first rate performances as the dysfunctional lovers, Julia and Lance, in this story that is a sensitive examination of a painful relationship that didn’t work.
The film is structured in five separate chapters.
The first one is in March 2015 when they first meet in Singapore.
Julia has been working there as a fashion brand manager for three years after leaving Manila to nurse a broken heart.
One night, her friends introduce her to Alden, a medical student from Manila.
They watch a concert, have a few drinks and end up in bed in Alden’s apartment. Julia leaves quietly while Alden is still asleep.
That morning, Alden shows up at her work with flowers. Julia says that for her, it’s just a one night stand, but Alden is persistent and they end up in bed again.
This is the most upbeat part of the movie: the getting to know each other phase. We learn that Alden comes from a rich family of doctors and he’s not even sure if he really wants to be one.
Julia comes from a poor family in Batangas and her mom has a small embroidery business.
The next episode is set in Manila. It’s December, 2016 and the two have a big fight while having a Christmas get-together in a friend’s lavish home.
We learn that Julia has left her career in Singapore just to be with Alden and she feels she has sacrificed a lot for their relationship.
The third chapter is in May, 2018 at the renewal of vows of Julia’s parents (Lotlot de Leon and Soliman Cruz) for their 30th wedding anniversary in Batangas.
At the beach reception, we learn that Julia and Alden have broken up but her folks are optimistic they will reconcile. The end up drinking on the beach and it’s obvious they still have feelings for each other.
The next episode, the shortest one, happens at the height of the pandemic in 2020. Alden, already a full full-pledged doctor, is shone alone talking on his phone, asking forgiveness from Julia for cheating on her while at a low point in his life.
This is an affecting scene where the two leads just greet each other with “hey” and no other words are spoken.
It is all acting, showing a wide range of emotions as reflected on their countenance and overall projection of sorrow, dejection, frustation and also, compassion. This is shown on extreme closeups of their faces on the screen of their cellphones.
The final chapter is in May of 2023. Julia takes her dad to a hospital and meets Alden again by chance. They end up conversing with each other in a park where they have a final closure.
Suckers for the obligatory happy ending will surely be disappointed, but viewers who enjoy “mapanakit” movies with heartrending endings, like the past works of Villamor that are similarly themed (notably, “Meet Me in St. Gallen”, “Ulan”, “Ikaw Ako at ang Ending”) will no doubt relish all the copious tears effortlessly shed by Alden and Julia in this heartbreaker.
At first, we didn’t think that Alden and Julia have much chemistry.
Alden and Kathryn Bernardo in “Hello Love Goodbye” seem to compolement each other more, as he’s mestizo and she’s morena.
Here, they are both mestizo and mestiza and Julia looks even wider than Alden.
It’s good Villamor’s dialogue-driven script is so well written that we really get to care and sympathize with her characters.
The same cannot be said with the other recent local film we saw, “A Very Good Girl”.
Whereas “Five Breakups” is grounded in the reality of failed relationships, “Good Girl” is an escapist revenge fantasy that is not convincingly realized.
They really spent much for its pricey production values, but the revenge story reminds us of similarly themed local movies like “Nuuk” and “Untrue” where Aga Muhlach and Cristine Reyes both go to an extremely great extent to carry out their very elaborate vengeance scheme that only the gullible would buy.
Also, pardon us when we say that Dolly de Leon is just miscast in the role of a filthy rich woman. She just fails to project the grandiosity and imperiousness that the role requires.
A very rich woman will also surely attend quickly to her overlapping (sungki) lower teeth and consult an orthodontist to straighten them.
Everyone who also saw the movie was saying the late Cherie Gil would have been much more credible in such a role.
Dolly is certainly much better off playing the toilet cleaner in “Triangle of Sadness” and as the poor dying mother in “Keys to the Heart”.
But the movie undoubtedly succeeded in its intention to project Kathryn as a remarkable actress.
She was given flashy scenes where she screams, cries, says cuss words and even vomit in front of the camera, and she managed to execute them all persuasively.
