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Film review: Alone/Together

MANILA, Philippines — I have always admired Antoinette Jadaone’s ability to surprise by pushing the boundaries of the conventional. Having seen the subtle darkness and multi-layered complexity of what I initially thought was harmless teenage fare that was Love You To The Stars And Back (2017), and fresh from the critical success of last year’s Never Not Love You — which I went as far as calling one of the greatest Filipino films of modern times — I entered the cinema to see Alone/Together with great expectations. 

They were not met. Not that it was a bad movie, but it was not up to the usual genius of Antoinette. 

For one, the story was a mishmash of every rom-com formulae since the ‘90s. This is inexplicable in the light of Antoinette’s demonstrable ability to create compelling avant-garde storylines. Enrique Gil and Liza Soberano are Rafael and Christine, University of Sto. Tomas and University of the Philippines students, respectively. The story starts with Liza breaking the fourth wall and enjoining the audience directly to “never forget the past.” This paves for the story to be told in flashback: Our protagonists meet inside the National Museum, where Christine, a UP Art Studies student, works as a volunteer guide. Christine was lecturing to some students about Luna’s Spoliarium; Rafael’s pre-med student who corrects her on some trivia about the painting. And just like the lovers in Never Not Love You and The Hows Of Us (2018), the two are polar opposites: She is a straight-A student, he a goof-off. But this being a rom-com, in short order, they fall in love, and inside the picturesque setting of the Sunken Garden, they vow everlasting love and make plans for the future. 

But things were not to be, at least for the moment. Falsely accused of defalcation in her first job, Christine suddenly splits up with Rafael. The emotional trauma inspires Rafael to shape up, because he graduates from medical school with Latin honors. 

They meet again five years after. Rafael is now in a relationship with Aly, a fellow doctor (played by the reliable Jasmine Curtis-Smith), while Christine is living in with Greg (Adrian Alandy) in an ethically-questionable relationship (she is his secretary, whose liability in her criminal case he paid off). Adrian’s character is that of a dour, condescending, controlling boss-cum-boyfriend, the better for us to rejoice when Christine finally leaves him. He insists on them meeting again. As expected, sparks begin to fly again as the old familiar feelings between them come flooding back, notwithstanding Christine’s reluctance, repeatedly intoning “hindi tama ito.” Thus arises the catharsis in the film. 

To be sure, the movie is well-put together and crafts-manlike. It is in the substance that we find its failings. The dialogue is trite and hackneyed; gone are the nuanced linguistic wit and flourishes of Antoinette movies past. And while the main characters are fairly well-developed, the plot is riddled with holes. For one, the so-called “complication” preventing Rafael and Christine from getting back together again, is hardly insurmountable: Neither of them is married! Even the not-so-chance encounter in New York between the two — one of the highlights of the movie — feels contrived. And unlike in NNLY and LYTTS, where the locations (London and Batangas, respectively) played an integral part of the movie by developing both plot and character, here New York served merely as a generic backdrop. Also, one cannot feel but sorry for Adrian and Jasmine; the former was a stock one-dimensional creature useful only to provide some semblance of tension, while the latter’s talents are wasted by serving as a simple plot device.

The thematic confusion was also palpable. While the movie starts off with allusions to history and its influence on the present, the dialogue is redolent with the thesis of starting over. If what the writer was trying to say is that “the past is prelude,” then something essential got lost in the execution. Also lost on the audience was the relevance of bookending the story with the Spoliarium; in light of the ambivalence of its message, it hardly seemed relevant, coming off as an affectatious put-on to infuse an air of high culture to a middlebrow narrative. The movie was not sure what it wanted to say, and it took a long time to say it: Clocking in at almost two hours, it was overlong for a generic romance.

The film is not altogether bad. Indeed, it was eminently watchable, mainly due to Liza’s skillful portrayal of her role. The rest of the cast, while rising to their usual level of competence, were just stock characters in a story arc that was only intent in ticking all the boxes for a love story. Antoinette’s fault is that she has spoiled us with her extraordinary aptitude as a filmmaker that we sometimes forget that she is also human, “born to make mistakes,” as the song goes.