Write About Love: An ode to love and acceptance
As an official entry for #MMFF2019, Write About Love’s two protagonists attempt to write a script together for a romantic film—despite apparent creative differences.
Lead actors Miles Ocampo and Rocco Nacino, along with Yeng Constantino and Joem Bascon, star in TBA Studios’ official 45th Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) entry, ‘Write About Love.’ The unusual pairings test their chemistry for the very first time on the big screen, giving adequate yet notable performances.
Directed by Crisanto Aquino, the film follows an unnamed “Female Writer” (Ocampo), a 22-year-old scriptwriting newbie and fashion entrepreneur, as she pitches a romantic boy-meets-girl story titled “Just Us” to a production company. With its “mainstream-ish” style, the panel soon retracts their decision on its movie approval for having similarities with a LizQuen film trailer that just got released. She is asked to revise her story and to write an entire script within a month, but not without the help of an unnamed “Male Writer” (Nacino), a 31-year-old indie scriptwriting veteran responsible for making the box office hit “I’m Drunk, I Hate You.”
As the writers with differing views on love and relationships work the script, the characters Joyce (Constantino) and Marco (Bascon) play out the ensuing rocky relationship for “Just Us” plot. The script tells the couple’s story as Joyce, an aspiring musician, and Marco, a construction engineer, struggle to work through their relationship due to priorities.
Throughout the film, the writers manipulate the story and the couple’s lives by imagining the scenes as if they’re watching their characters play out their story in front of them in real life. Through changes in its aspect ratios and color grading alternatively—from full screen and muted (real life) to widescreen and full cinematic color (“Just Us”)—the film then kind of indicates its way to the two worlds finally merging.
A film within a film
“Write About Love” doesn’t hide the fact that it’s both a critique and an homage to classic Filipino romantic comedy films such as One More Chance, That Thing Called Tadhana, and I’m Drunk, I Love You (also one of TBA Studios’ productions released in 2017).
‘Female Writer’ is a single-since-birth hopeless-romantic who loves romantic comedies. ‘Male Writer’ is an older, much more experienced guy who finds them a bit too cliché for his liking. They then go to a Baguio-Sagada trip together to have an immersion to further develop their love story.
Moreover, the movie depicts how romantic comedies (romcoms) seem to have always been written and suggests how they probably should be. Its “film-within-a-film” vibe shows characters do whatever their hearts tell them, no matter how irrational they may be.
With throwing lines such as: “Kung may constant man about love is it drives us to make decisions. Good decisions. Bad decisions. Minsan selfish. Minsan selfless.” Both then realize that writers (and viewers alike) should treat characters as people who have real emotions and let them decide their fates for themselves.
As for the first time leading role in film, Ocampo epitomizes with wit and creativity, down to her innocence and relationship naiveté that compliments Nacino’s character well. However, the film has ended too abruptly with its open-ended conclusions. In conveying contentment and acceptance of one’s fate, the film ends by leaving a bland taste in the mouth despite its refreshing use of different film techniques new to the “casual-viewing” audience.
Despite ranking seventh out of eight films on its first day gross, ‘Write About Love’ has still made an effort to bring something new as only one of its kind in this year’s MMFF lineup and—perhaps—that’s all that matters. It is showing in cinemas nationwide until January 7, 2020.
Rating: 3/5
This article was originally published in The Benildean
