Review: Ex Ex Lovers is Funny, Nostalgic, Surprisingly Rewarding

(SPOT.ph) Ex Ex Lovers kicks off with Joy (Jolina Magdangal) unhappy to find that her Valentine's dinner date with her daughter SC (Loisa Andalio) has been crashed by the latter's boyfriend Joey (Juan Karlos). Worse yet, Joey decides that was the time to propose. Joy who married young herself and ended up being abandoned by her husband has major reservations about SC doing the same. And then, SC makes the request that they find her errant father so that he can walk her down the aisle.

Joy's estranged husband is played by Marvin Agustin, and the movie makes no bones about this whole enterprise being a nostalgia trip capitalizing on the familiarity of an old love team. It is very much committed to the bit of being a throwback, largely forgoing recent trends in local romantic filmmaking, and offering something a little sillier on the surface. Make no mistake, the movie is also about a lost love; it's just that it is much more prone to laughing about it, and not just lingering on the heartache.

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To Malta, with love

The narrative takes Joy to Malta, which is apparently where Ced has ended up after nearly a decade of dodging debts. The film is quick to play on established chemistry, while also emphasizing that Joy is a woman scorned, suspicious of everything that Ced is selling her. Magdangal plays both of these notes very well, comedically rubber banding between overt disdain for her husband and a tender remembrance of how things used to be. Agustin, on his part, plays into the schtick as well, exuding the goofy charm of a guy who has avoided consequences for a good chunk of his life.

The movie gets a little slow in Malta, but picks its momentum back up in the second half. It becomes something a little different here, as the focus shifts to the impending marriage of their young daughter. It also becomes much less about nostalgia and more about how the past informs the present. Somehow, within the silly, convoluted framework of these two ex-lovers reuniting under acrimonious circumstances and teaming up to maybe sabotage their daughter’s nuptials, the movie finds something serious to say about relationships and the times we’re living in.

Not resting on nostalgia

It’s a neat trick. The movie very much embraces being the kind of broad rom com for the 90s, where the camera might linger on a funny face being made as a reaction shot. But as it moves forward, Ex Ex Lovers gathers more and more nuance. And it will still have all those jokey beats and silly expressions, but it will also start to share insight on some very Filipino things, examining the ways in which parents can become inextricably involved in the relationships of their children, and what that might mean for young people who are still trying to figure out who they are.

Ex Ex Lovers turns out to be pretty rewarding. It could prune a few more minutes here and there but in the end it feels rather remarkable. It would have likely been enough to play the nostalgia act: to coast on the charm of its two leads and the memory of their on screen pairing. It might have been enough to remind people of what our romantic films used to be like, before hugot became the dominant force in our narratives. But it also manages something deeply modern in its romantic travails, and ends up providing something new in exploring something old.

Rating: 4 stars

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