By Rex Catubig

 

THE first time I watched my free movie as a senior citizen of Dagupan City was before the pandemic. And it harkened back those childhood discovery moments when you got feel-good freebies like ferris wheel ride, tinapay with ice cream, pancit at the Chinese resto–and going to the movies.

At the matinee showing in a mall movie house, I was a child again, awed by the wide screen and clear moving images, although the soundtrack, maxed out at explosive decibel, was not kind to my aging eardrums.

The movie Sid and Aya started as I plopped down on my seat. The place smelled kind of musty, a by-product I supposed of sun scorched, sweaty bodies like mine that dried up on the upholstered seats and the offshoot of that trademark scent of seniors disdainfully described as “amoy baul”, a symbolic reference to the moldy smell of old stuff locked up in a trunk for long period.  So in an act of denial meant to distance myself from fellow geriatrics, I pulled out my cologne and sprayed it in spurts, discreetly but shamelessly.

Thus, having settled myself, I then focused on the screen. But again, I felt uncomfortable at the unfolding reel. Not having seen of late, other Filipino films for reference, I was initially disappointed at what I began to see: the tone, the idiom, the rhythm, the treatment, the mannerisms—the film vocabulary– were all rehashed Hollywood.

Yet it did not take long for me to be enamored with Anne Curtis as the smart, playful Aya. The same ditzy Anne Curtis of Showtime had some acting aces up her sleeves. She turned her kookiness into a millennial image of the unfettered, unaffected, devil-may-care everyday girl working her butt off—for family’s sake. She reminded me of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman—though as Aya, her characterization was more nuanced.

Dingdong Dantes played Sid with labored white-collar angst, which this senior found shallow. Hunky and good looking, the fault was in the eyes (he looked a little walleyed) that did not speak nor convey much. Not quite a blank stare but rather soulless, lacking in emotive intensity.

Nonetheless, I was thoroughly grateful that there were no fireworks hysterics.

And the hugot lines were casually bandied about: I liked best the line that said,  “What we love is what ultimately kills us”. Kaboom! As a friend consoling us over a love lost, remarked: You have not ceased to love if you have not ceased to hurt. As the song goes:

“Love hurts, love scars
Love wounds and marks any heart
Not tough or strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain…”

No doubt, love kills. At times, sweetly, softly, sometimes, harshly, remorselessly. I don’t mind being killed. One has to take the risk. For as Aya noted: “Lahat halos ng masarap bawal“. The forbidden kills, in ways uncertain, inexplicable, but inevitable.

As a senior, one learns to live with all the proscribed “bawal” and devise ways to circumvent them. If one has to listen to reason, and mind all the restrictions, one would die of deprivation. There is nothing more pathetic than a shriveled heart.

Better to live dangerously and die in love, of love. It’s when you learn what living and loving is all about.

“Mi corazon insiste”, sings Jencarlos Canela.

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