‘Para sa Broken Hearted’ review: Skinny love

While redundant about the topic of love and its aftermath like many of its ilk, it is also apparent that Digo Ricio’s Para sa Broken Hearted is an appealing trifle.

Nightcrawlers in transit

First, the film, an adaptation of Marcelo Santos’ best-selling book of the same title, is a looker. The film’s 3 tragic love stories are framed during a storytelling session between two heartbroken ladies who chance upon each other one night while on their way for a sojourn in Baguio.

Neil Daza, the film’s cinematographer, takes the framing device into a chance to showcase his ability to produce out of Manila’s chaotic night scene a melancholic charm.

Appreciating the curious charisma of Cubao as a meeting place for frenzied nightcrawlers in transit, Ricio, who worked as an art director before finally directing this debut feature, doesn’t pepper the hub with too much design – leaving it as is, and allowing Daza to light the place in a way that would set the right mood and atmosphere for tales of heartbreak.

The look of the individual stories is more playful, as opposed to the more sedated feel of the framing device.

 

Ricio recruits split screens, text messages suddenly popping out, pseudo-musical numbers that ape the razzle-dazzle of La La Land, animated sarcastic ceilings and other delightful gimmicks to push the glaring gap between falling in and out of love.

As a result, the film feels more fun and dynamic than it should be. Despite all the repetition of the overly familiar emotions, the film rarely feels exhausting. The creative thought and resources that Ricio put into the film is actually quite remarkable, given that the film has very little to contribute about the real pangs of loving.

Hefty in style and verve

If Para sa Broken Hearted is skinny in terms of novelty of its overused content, it is at least thick and hefty in style and verve.

Also, the performances of Shy Carlos and Louise de los Reyes, all seamlessly transforming from spritely to somber, contribute to the mix of mania and dolor that pervades the film’s tone. Their love stories are juvenile. They are mostly about hopelessly romantic women either rushing into love without examining the repercussions of their hasty actions or clinging to the hope of a longer lasting romance.

However, their performances are earnest and measured in the sense that they allow room for the humor that is part and parcel of silly love affairs.

What’s interesting about Para sa Broken Hearted is that it maximizes its conceit of tragic romances being narrated seemingly out of nowhere and to the most random of strangers.

In fact, the film is almost about our infatuation with heartbreak, how it consumes our psychologies to the point of forcing us to abandon routine to take a sudden trip out of town, how it becomes the bond that will connect two individuals who do not know each other, how stories about it combat not just boredom but also sadness. There is cleverness in the way the three stories are weaved together to form not just a convenient triptych to fill the running time but also to convey something such an obsession over heartaches. 

Not to be taken seriously

Having said that, Para sa Broken Hearted isn’t a film to be taken seriously. It doesn’t want you to.

However, Ricio also doesn’t want to just keep on telling the same old story over and over again even if the material he is given insists that he should. He crafts something that is not just undeniably pleasing to the eyes, but also fascinating.  – 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.