'The Loved One' Goes For Anti-Drama—An Experiment That Doesn't Quite Land

(SPOT.ph) Irene Emma Villamor’s The Loved One stars Anne Curtis and Jericho Rosales as Ellie and Eric, who were a couple for ten years. It opens in black and white, with Eric waiting for Ellie at a restaurant. It is apparent they are no longer together, and we see him send her a message: “love you still.” The movie then dives into their past, back to when they first met, and when they first got together. In non-linear fashion, we see fragments of their relationship, studying what they were like when they were happiest, and also what it was like when it wasn’t working out.

An early conversation between the two lays out a question that the movie seems to try and answer. At a wedding, Ellie asks if Eric thinks the marrying couple are going to last. And he replies that he does, basically because they got that far, and they’re about to have a kid. And Ellie asks if that’s really all there is to it: because they’ve survived that long, and they’re about to bear a new responsibility, it is automatic that they’re going to stay together. The movie refuses to take this idea at face value, and parses the intricacies of a relationship: who people are, where they came from, and what it is that they’re getting out of being with someone.

Interestingly, the movie takes an anti-dramatic approach to things. It seems to actively avoid the scenes that one might think of as big events. At one point, we find out that Ellie’s father dies, but we do not see her receiving the news. Instead, we are just at the wake, and she and Eric seem to have already gone through the worst of the shock, and are instead dealing with what comes next. Over and over, the film does this, looking into the aftermath of big events, staying with smaller moments that show how these events have permeated into who these people are, and into how they deal with each other.

It’s a clever thing, showing the wound that festers instead of the cut. It’s certainly a sophisticated way of dissecting a relationship, but it doesn’t feel entirely satisfying. The fragments form a fuzzy picture at best, and the ineffable remains ineffable. The script just makes these characters out to be fundamentally incompatible, with goals and priorities that from the start feel miles apart. They may be charming together – and much credit goes to Rosales and Curtis for their chemistry – but the characters as written never really seem aligned. And they might repeatedly say that they love each other, but it becomes hard to see the tragedy in their parting.

And maybe that’s the point, even: the film studying how people enjoy the idea of being with someone, even if the reality of it isn’t really adding up. That’s a fine idea, but it’s still a struggle to watch. By going anti-dramatic, the movie denies the audience the typical pleasures, but doesn’t offer much else in exchange. There is a strong technical package here, with Pao Orendain delivering the visual goods in both color and black and white, and Len Calvo putting together a melancholy score that fits the mood. A lovely stripped down version of Cup of Joe’s "Multo" gives a particular sequence a boost as well.

The Loved One remains a worthy experiment, even if it doesn’t entirely work. Villamor is exploring what else a romantic film can be, going beyond the simple formula of two people running into each other and discovering that they ought to be together, before finally ending up in a relationship at the very end. This is a movie that refuses to give simple answers to what makes people fall in love, and what makes them fall out of love, in its fragments delivering bits and pieces of the complex emotions that just seem to pile up the longer one is with someone. That’s all very interesting, even if it didn’t land all that well.

Rating: 3 stars.