Young love in the time of social media

Film review: So Connected

MANILA, Philippines — If you are a senior citizen and trying to peer into the life of millennials, a couple of ideas can work for you.

Go to Facebook and see how delirious they are over their pop icons and how insane they become when someone not aligned gets into the life of their cherished idols.

In social media, you can like or dislike a person and turn to bashing when the personality involved is not comprehensible to someone’s way of life.

But the common denominator is that they are all brandishing new cellphones, tablets and laptops.

They can’t do without one 24 hours a day and by the time their days end, you see an active life that started and ended in social media. Reflections only happen when they lost their loved ones and another cycle of a millennial’s life begins.

In Jason Paul Laxamana’s So Connected, relationships tend to become victors and victims of social media.

They are forever taking selfies, they are always agog over one exciting video or another and as usual, they tend to change cellphones the way millennial friendships begin and end.

A stolen cellphone ends up in the hands of Janella Salvador (as Trisha Biscocho) and what she didn’t know is that a file of her earlier photos and videos is easily accessible to new owners through an app.

And thus, Jameson Blake (Karter) has a good time reviewing the videos and to his surprise, he fell in love with the subject.

To a senior citizen, all these endless preoccupations with videos and apps can render him bored and dreary.

But midway into the film, you get the inner charm of the narrative and you get involved.

Because the young lead actors forge a kind of rapport that is at once real and convincing.

The character of Janella is almost always talky for her own sake, but one presumes that comes with being a freewheeling millennial.

But it works as a good foil for the character of Jameson (as the video editor) who is quiet and content to see good things happen in his life.

By and large, this romance film succeeds because the rapport is spontaneous and not anything contrived to make a love team look bankable.

Through the years, Jameson has earned enough acting chops where his character shines without effort. And he can connect with Janella in a way that is unexpected but easily remarkable.

To be honest about it, Jameson is a much better actor than Elmo Magalona, who is probably better off as the actress’ special someone in real life. But not on film.

So Connected works its way inside a moviegoer’s heart slowly but surely. When you see the relationship getting real, the magic happens and never mind that all these happenings were mitigated by stolen cellphones and bashers in social media.

Direk Jason Paul knows his milieu only too well and can weave stories engrossing enough to be of interest to senior citizens. But to his advantage, he can pinpoint the real from the banal and this is one reason why — in one way or the other — this millennial film edifies.

Every Jason Paul Laxamana film is an education and he can very well speak for the millennials and make them comprehensible to non-millennials.

The film is, happy to say in their lingo, so relatable.

As you try to comprehend how those new gadgets work which is part of the story, you leave the theater with a sigh of relief. Yes, this is not my time, and this is not my story because when you review the entire film, it is highly-revealing, sometimes it is mystical and in context, yes, so millennial.

In this film’s unique story, the teaser is most apt: A soul mate is not found. A soul mate is recognized.

So Connected is now showing in cinemas.