My Cactus Heart defies movie archetypes

MANILA, Philippines - My Cactus Heart, topbilled by real-life couple Matteo Guidicelli and Maja Salvador with Xian Lim, is probably the oddest-titled Star Cinema movie. However, according to the movie director Enrico Santos, the move is part of the film outfit’s conscious effort to keep things a bit fresh and unpredictable.

“Just when everyone thought a movie title should either be a song title or song line, My Cactus Heart takes itself from an adlib made by Maja during the shoot,” shares Enrico. “She quipped, ‘Parang cactus ang puso ko, matinik-tinik.’ The metaphor stuck and became the movie’s title.”

The title is not just the experimental aspect in the movie. In fact, it is the first of a series of movies from the Skylight label of Star Cinema, designed to attract the younger, edgier crowd, who like their mainstream preferences peppered with surprises.

“Skylight also places its bet on a new generation of stars performing unique roles,” adds Enrico, who is also the producer of the movie. “Maja, as Sandy, is the younger, mean girl-heartbreaker — a flip on the common saintly leading ladies. While Matteo, as Carlo, is the romantic dreamer who completes the exchange of archetypes. This time, it is the innocent boy who teaches the expert girl how to love.”

My Cactus Heart, according to Enrico, is a story he always wanted to tell the public because it asks the young the questions: With their absentee parents and all the delights of technology, do they still understand how it feels to really fall in love, and fall deeply? Or, is every relationship an attempt to avoid the pain of a face-to-face relationship, unmediated by online and mobile? How many girls are like Sandy, who has a cactus heart — fooled into thinking what they feel is love when it is actually just “jpegs” of love?

The movie follows the story of Sandy (Maja), a cactus-hearted lass, who will unwittingly fall in love with the ever-optimistic Carlo (Matteo). How will Benedict (Xian) figure in this love triangle?

My Cactus Heart, clarifies Enrico, is not a run-of-the-mill love story by defying archetypes, presenting new locations.

“The movie has its classic homefront and school milieu but lots of the scenes are situated in an animation studio, and some involved a videoke visuals shoot,” says Enrico, who also wrote the hit In The Name Of Love starring Angel Locsin and Aga Muhlach. “This presented the great opportunity to play with form. We made part of the movie animated, and another part a mock-videoke. Throw in snippets of home videos, and even black and

white movie spoofs, and we got a rare rom-com that plays with structure with a touch of the post-modern.”

More than just being rom-com, it also can be tagged as a family comedy in its heart. It has a few family secrets and surprises up its sleeves that nuance love story into unpredictability.

When asked what the morale of the movie is, Enrico quips, “We, too, succumb to the love, and surrender our cactus hearts to the moment and to ‘The One.’”

My Cactus Heart, Enrico’s first full-length directorial debut, also stars Ricky Davao, Bettinna Carlos, Rosanna Roces, Lemuel Pelayo, among others. It opens today in cinemas nationwide.