‘Wild and Free’ review: Bedazzled in a bed of roses

Oggs Cruz

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‘Wild and Free’ review: Bedazzled in a bed of roses
'It is almost as if Wild and Free isn’t aware of how toxic it and its message are'

Poop, despite being drizzled with perfume and sprinkled with glitters, will still smell and look like poop.

Problematic to the core

Wild and Free is a film that is problematic to the core.

When ex-lovers Ellie (Sanya Lopez) and Jake (Derrick Monasterio) serendipitously meet and start to talk of their failed romance, it almost feels like the film is treading the same tired ground a lot of tragic love stories treaded before. Ellie and Jake exchange awkward glances and conversations about the heartbreaks they have suffered apart.

What sets Wild and Free apart is that it is not satisfied with mere reminiscences of the good times when love was blossoming. It has carnal yearnings. Their awkward glances are laced with knowing and lustful looks, and their conversations are riddled with innuendos.

Clearly, love isn’t what binds Ellie and Jake. It is sex, or at least in the imagination of Macatuno, love with a healthy dose of sex. There are no problems with movies that are heavy about humanity’s baser desires. What makes Wild and Free drastically dubious is that it insists that the love story at its center is pure and pristine, that its characters deserve not just a happy ending that is sealed with a passionate kiss, but one that is rife with steamy and sweaty lovemaking.

However, the narrative itself is an offensive tale, not because it puts its prurient intentions above everything else, but because its message is simply toxic. While most local romances are ridden with distasteful portrayals of women with its ladies shown fawning and doing anything for their men, Wild and Free takes the chauvinism to another level.

The film has women beholden to men, with Ellie, spineless and questionably beholden to Jake, as the centerpiece of this gross portrayal of women. Then there is Jake’s mother (Cheska Diaz) whose motivations for being the confused character that she is, are troubling in the sense that she explains that all the conflicts in the film are due to her sins in the past, sins that can be traced to her being both a woman and a mother.

THE KISS. Jake and Ellie engage in a passionate moment.

Adds insult to injury

What adds insult to injury is that while it presents women not just tolerating but also taking the blame for hideous men, it is also a film that has women working harder than men.

Lopez does what she can with a character whose range of personality is minuscule at best. She at least churns out moments where emotions do not feel forced. Monasterio, however, is simply abysmal. He delivers his lines with all the horrid bluntness of a wooden club. He lacks the charisma of a leading man, the sweltering heat and passion of one half of an erotica, and the maturity and understanding to convince that his character’s psychological instability is more than just a product of lazy writing.

Macatuno tries her best to make everything palatable at least, but fails.

The film’s visuals are at times pleasant, presenting a facet of the busy and crowded city that matches the mood that is ambitioned by a film whose spectacles include nightly trysts and fornication atop washing machines. However, while the film is fine to look at, it never reaches a point where it can be described as a pleasurable experience.

LOVE? What happens when attractions crosses to love?

Toxic message

Wild and Free is too tame for erotica. It is too shallow for romance. It is too poised and polished to be a good bad film. It is almost as if Wild and Free isn’t aware of how toxic it and its message are.

It is, however, the perfect bedazzled poop sitting on a bed of roses. It simply stinks.  – 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.  

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