‘Mr. and Mrs. Cruz’ review: Profoundly romantic

Sigrid Bernardo owes most of the charms and innovations of Mr. and Mrs. Cruz to all the conventional romances that came before it.

Picturesque and sentimental

The film treads the familiar formula of a boy serendipitously meeting a girl in a picturesque place that lends its magic to their blossoming passion.

Its story of Raffy (JC Santos) and Gela (Ryza Cenon), both surnamed Cruz and both sojourning in Palawan to rid themselves of the bad taste of recent heartbreaks, is hardly novel. Reminiscent of Antoinette Jadaone’s That Thing Called Tadhana (2014) in the sense that it borrows the trope of two strangers falling in love through eloquent discussions about almost anything under the sun and other timely coincidences, it takes advantage of the slick simplicity of its threadbare plot to echo the undeniable and infectious appeal of other people’s spontaneous infatuation for each other.

Mr. and Mrs. Cruz unrelentingly sentimental, unabashed in its mission to inexplicably make profound statements out of something as routine and conventional as love and its related pains.

It is littered with most of the genre’s mawkish embellishments, like the garishly composed sequences that overuse music and other artifices to enunciate the emotions that are developing within its starry-eyed lovers in record speed. While it clearly focuses on its two protagonists’ past and present experiences with love, it populates itself with other colorful characters, all of whom are there to contribute to the film’s make-believe world that seems to revolve around everything and anything about the affairs of the heart. 

Sharp and canny writing

What Bernardo succeeds in doing is to make that world as palatable as possible, even in all of its characters’ blatant obliviousness to anything else that doesn’t concern the heart.

The story after all happens within a short period of time, during a vacation that is precisely meant to serve as therapy for the characters’ sadness. It is but reasonable for the film to be pervaded only by thoughts and themes of love and the relationships it both fosters and taints. A less thoughtful director would have made a suffocating film out of the stubborn concern of the film but Bernardo has ways to turn the simplest love story into a highly enjoyable but also sometimes poignant experience.

It is good that Bernardo’s writing is sharp and smart.

When the writing calls for dialogue that needs to be as close to real life as possible, Bernardo whips up conversations that flow instinctively amidst the abundance of wit and clever humor. What is most fascinating are the passages where Bernardo just lets go by weaving poetry out of drunken stupor and turning candid and embarrassing situations into moments of bliss and magic.

Both Cenon and Santos play their parts capably. It helps that both of them seem more than willing to shed the glitz and elegance that is typical to romantic roles, turning their characters to something that is more or less more human. 

Bittersweet ode

Mr. and Mrs. Cruz is aware of its own kitsch, Bernardo embracing it, and turning it into an element of her bittersweet ode to the chance encounters that cure even the most harrowing of heartaches. In fact, the film, at one point near the end, satirizes itself and all the numerous devices it used. It then plunges towards a conclusion that turns what was shaping up to be another glamorized account of fated love into something profoundly anti-romantic.

In a way, Bernardo, by navigating a story through all the grooves of the overused formula and then allowing one of her characters to simply decide to walk away instead of swooning straight into the expected fairy tale ending, makes a statement that while love may be a product of destiny, it and all the pain it can create aren’t prisons that strip all those who are beholden to them of the free will to be happy without them. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ Tirad Pass. Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.