Old dog, new tricks Film review: Unforgettable

MANILA,Philippines — For those of us who are of the opinion that Sarah Geronimo is a good but not great actress, Unforgettable just might change our minds. Always sincere, never ostentatious, she makes you feel her character with such force that your emotional investment will be unconditional.

Sarah plays Jasmine, a twenty-something highly functional person with autism, who lives in Baguio City. Among her quirks: She is obsessive-compulsive, waking up at 5:30 a.m. on the dot, every day; all the meals she cooks are adorned with smileys; she is hypersensitive to sound; she is incapable of prevarication, speaking her mind with such candor that she sometimes (unintentionally) offends; she has a photographic memory. But through it all, she retains a childlike innocence and deep and abiding kindness atypical for someone her age.

Disaster strikes when her grandmother Olive (Gina Pareño), who raised her when her parents died, is diagnosed with tuberculosis. Due to granny’s age, and Jasmine’s impaired immune system, she is sent away to live with her siblings Dahlia (Ara Mina) and Violet (Meg Imperial) in Manila. There she meets a stray dog (Milo), to which she takes an instant liking.

Jasmine, though, is uncomfortable in the big city. She cannot sleep in a strange bed, and unaccustomed to loud sounds, she suffers a meltdown. Her sisters at times do not understand her being “different.” In the midst of her angst, she recalls a tale told by her grandma of having been saved from illness, decades ago, by a dog named “Happy.” Looking at its picture from an old locket, the stray’s resemblance to “Happy” strikes Jasmine, and in her simple mind, she becomes convinced that the key to her grandmother’s recovery would be to bring Happy Redux to her. Forbidden by her sisters to leave, Jasmine slips out of their house and tries to make her way on her own back to Baguio, with “Happy Junior” in tow.

On her way, she suffers one setback after the other. She takes pity on a despondent cab driver with a sob story (Dennis Padilla) who tries to rob her but later relents; she gives him all her food and money. Hungry and broke, she runs into Janet (Regine Velasquez), a hapless eatery owner abandoned by her help. Jasmine then waits tables for her, using her unerring memory to take orders. At least Janet feeds Jasmine and gives her fare money for Baguio. But then Jasmine gets offloaded from a bus after Happy gets unruly. Lost and alone, she collapses in front of a shanty, and Happy is captured by the town’s dogcatcher. But eventually, with the help of a kindly mother and daughter (Yayo Aguila and Kim Molina), she and Happy reach Baguio and Jasmine is reunited with her sick Lola Olive.

Sarah is excellent in this movie, capturing all the nuances of someone with autism, down to the look in her eyes. Impressive likewise is the aura of guilelessness she has managed to project so effectively in all of her scenes. Having seen up close how those with autism act during tantrums, the authenticity of her depictions gave me goosebumps. To be sure, in this movie, Ms. Geronimo has risen far above her previous performances.

Of course, great acting (by Sarah and, as expected, by Gina), by itself, does not a great movie make. The movie’s bland storytelling definitely holds it back. A straightforward tale should not be difficult to tell with vigor, but sadly, the film slogs through its hour and a half. Only occasional splashes of humor, the best of which is the “inside joke” about Anne Curtis’ vocal prowess (or lack of it) in a cameo wherein she plays Nurse Gem, relieve the tedium. And while dog movies such as Benji (1974) and the more recent and edgier Alpha (2018), to which genre this movie aspires to belong, can always effortlessly tug at the heartstrings of moviegoers (especially dog lovers), “Happy” the dog is underused here. The writers also failed to neatly tie in the relevance of the lead character’s photographic memory to the overall story, making the audience feel high and dry as to the significance of the film’s title. Lastly, while the supporting cast is able on the whole (with pleasing cameos also by Tirso Cruz III, Marco Gumabao, Lander Vera Perez, Alessandra de Rossi and Empoy), the producers could have used some of Jasmine’s disarming candor to tell Meg that she cannot act, and should have promptly replaced her.

In fine, if Unforgettable is to be remembered at all, it would be as the movie where Sarah came of age as an actress. If only for that alone, it is well worth watching. While not exactly that “old” a “dog” in the industry, Sarah has shown us that she can, indeed, learn some wonderful new “tricks.”