The audience is enabled to peek at the world Cinta has known all her life: its affectations about love are unrealistic, caricaturish, yet for some reason, overwhelmingly pure, or overwhelmingly blind to the brooding eyes of her one-dimensional leading man, Edgardo Salvador (portrayed by Acey Aguilar). These are intertwined with clips of her films, an amazingly faithful nod to the ridiculously superfluous rom-coms of Philippine cinema in the past. The audience is immersed in the quirky world of Cinta, framed by the four walls of her unpaid apartment: a kerfuffle of wigs, fairy lights, trinkets that decorate each furniture, each wall. Director Martika Ramirez Escobar deftly sees to it, together with the accomplished and dream-like visuals of Aaron Cabangis, parsimonious editing of Sari Estrada, and Victoria Mostoles’ elaborate production, another character in itself. And dream she continually does.Įverything around Cinta is as removed from reality as her state of mind. Every day the tall piles of VHS tapes are seen obsessively replayed, as Cinta dela Cruz relives the dreamy past that was taken away too soon. With her glory days long gone and forgotten, we are then reintroduced to the Cinta dela Cruz of the present (played with such verve and nuance by Mailes Kanapi): She is now a recluse, albeit still animated. We see her sudden rise to fame as quickly as it fades. The film opens narrating the humble beginnings of a young Cinta dela Cruz (played by the enchanting and funny Anna Deroca) and her quest to stardom, told in a colorful montage of vintage VHS clips of 70’s films she starred in. Pusong Bato, one of the ten short films vying for Cinemalaya’s top recognition this year, fortunately proves the latter, and more.
When you are told that the premise of the film you are about to watch revolves around a has-been starlet who falls in love with a rock – yes, that unassuming, solidified piece of merged minerals you find everywhere – you can either cringe at its ridiculousness, or be excited that you may have unearthed something special.
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