Cannot not love it

Film review: Never Not Love You

There are a lot of things Never Not Love You (NNLY) does not have.

It does not have “hugot” lines. It does not have histrionic confrontation scenes. It does not have a complicated plot, not even a subplot. It has no love triangles, no uncontrollable crying, no surprise twist, no ritzy locations.

What it does have is a straight trajectory of a narrative that is totally devoid of the usual frills and flourishes that it leaves one breathless with its candor and honesty. Verily, it is the anti-romcom.

NNLY is the simplest of boy-meets-girl movies: Joanne (played by Nadine Lustre), a rank-and-file advertising agency employee, meets Gio (James Reid), a graphic-slash-tattoo artist on an errand to pick up stickers commissioned by Joanne’s company. The attraction is instant: he is overtly enamored, while hers is more latent. He woos her, she falls for him in a big way, they fall head-over-heels and move in together. But they are poles apart in circumstances and temperament. He is the spoiled brat, living off his remarried father’s money sent to him regularly, which enables him to indulge in his barely-lucrative artistry; she the family’s breadwinner, on whom her father and siblings depend for almost everything. Gio, it seems, has no drive, content with the occasional “racket”; she is fiercely ambitious and already has her future life planned out in minute detail.

Financial tragedy then strikes Gio: his father, expecting his third child by his new wife, cuts off his support, saying he is old enough to fend for himself. Suddenly impecunious, he is forced to accept a job offer in London. Joanne, however, is reluctant to leave, as she is on the fast track to an important promotion. Choosing with a heavy heart to go to London with Gio, she quickly becomes unhappy as the only work she could find was as a waitress, a far cry from her goal to become a brand manager in her firm. Friction with Gio — who has found both personal and professional fulfillment in his new job — promptly arises, and to save the relationship, they both grudgingly agree that it would be best for Joanne to return to Manila and to her work in advertising. They make a pact, though, to sustain their relationship by frequent phone and video calls. Apart, they both fulfill their dreams. But will their love be enough to weather the strain of separation?

In NNLY, director Antoinette Jadaone presents love not in the way it should be, but in the way it is. Ironically, its beauty lies in its lack of filter. All the actors are shot with a minimum of make-up, if at all. The characters play average people who go through everyday places in the metropolis either by commuting or riding in motorcycles. They eat in convenient stores, no dinners in fancy restaurants and luxury cars are to be seen here. The dialogue is what ordinary people ordinarily say, complete with street slang and cuss words. This movie is indeed no fairy tale.

And truly, at the risk of spoiling it for you, neither does it have a fairytale ending. What it gives you is an abrupt, ambivalent yet multi-layered finish that is one of the most powerful in recent Philippine cinema, reminiscent of the classic The Third Man (1949) or the newer Lost In Translation (2003).

In doing NNLY, Jadaone has gone where other directors, notably Cathy Garcia-Molina in A Second Chance (2015) and Olivia Lamasan in The Mistress (2013), contemplated venturing into, only to pull out at the last moment. In so doing, Jadaone has made an instant classic that will soon find its rightful place in the pantheon of Filipino cinema greats.

She could not have pulled it off, however, without Lustre, whose transformation into a serious and mature actress is nothing short of incredible. While she has shown indications of brilliant acting even in such harmless fluff as her last movie This Time (2016), also with Reid, I have never seen anyone so young improve so much in so little time.

I cannot say whether or not Lustre has studied the Meisner technique, or it just came naturally for her due to her palpable chemistry with real-life partner Reid, but in this film she not only acts, but reacts, and how! With such economy of gestures and facial expressions, she manages to convey an entire treasure trove of emotions, often several strata at a time, that she fills the screen with solid blasts of feelings. The effect on the audience is not so much making one cry, but hitting you in the gut, in your heart of hearts. The last scene, where she poignantly projects an entire gamut of emotive contradictions without saying a word, will surely become one of the most memorable moments in local cinema. Barring a professional disaster of epic proportions, Nadine Lustre is the Next Great Actress.

In a pivotal scene, Joanne asks Gio: “Pa’no ang future natin?” Well, if this is the future of Philippine movies, then we need not fear. For JaDine or not, love team or not, romcom or not, this piece of work will transcend them all, a film that one cannot not love. In NNLY, Lustre has come of age, and so (again) has our film industry.