A charming and subversive romantic movie

Despite the unimaginative and corny title, Catch Me… I’m in Love (Star Cinema and Viva Films, 2011) is the type of movie I would recommend to my students and others like me who are romantically jaded. Why? Well, if only to partake of the kilig moments (Ah, there are so many of them!) of the two characters played competently by Sarah Geronimo and Gerald Anderson and, perhaps, to believe in love again. Aside from the charming antics of Geronimo as Roan, and the abs and handsome face of Anderson as Eric, what I like about this romantic flick is its subversive undertone. What was graphically presented in the movie is the class struggle in our present society. Kudos to director Mae Czarina Cruz and writer Mel Mendoza-Del Rosario for this successful project. Roan is an NGO worker helping the marginalized farmers in the province in their livelihood and education projects. Eric is the happy-go-lucky presidential son who just came back from his studies in the US. (Yes, it is always the U.S. After all, we are a neo-colony.) In a romantic stroke of fate, Eric finds himself in an immersion activity imposed by his president-father, and placed under the supervision of Roan. Of course to make kilig the romantic fools like me, there are scenes of Roan and Eric cavorting in the mud in rice paddies. This is also the chance for Anderson to show his abs, making the audience cheer in delight. There are also malnourished children and weather-beaten farmers egging the two lead characters to get closer to each other. In short, the presidential son falls in love with an NGO worker from a lower middle class family from Caloocan, a city “of drug addicts and hold-uppers," according to one elitist character.

Surprisingly, the affair merits the approval of the President and the First Lady, played by the ever beautiful and excellent actress Dawn Zulueta. So where’s the conflict? On Twitter, that’s where. People are tweeting that Roan is not beautiful enough for the handsome first son. The elite women in social events would make snide comments that Roan from Caloocan does not deserve Eric from Malacañang. Consumed by insecurities, Roan decides to break off with Eric. The movie’s story is not really original, with echoes of Hollywood films like The Prince and Me starring Julia Stiles and Chasing Liberty starring Mandy Moore. The ending is practically copied from Notting Hill, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. But Catch Me… I’m in Love is still original in the sense that the characters and the nuances in the film are very Filipino. It has verisimilitude. Most of the people in the audience, when I watched this movie, were college students. They were laughing and cheering for Roan and Eric. It has been a long time since I experienced watching a Filipino movie where the cinema is full and the audience is actively reacting to what’s on the screen. Geronimo reminded me of Sharon Cuneta during the ‘80s and ‘90s. She is a real star. Of course, since Catch Me… I’m in Love is a movie with a formula, it has to have a happy ending. Just like the old Sharon Cuneta movies by Viva Films, the characters must chase each other at the airport. Here, Roan chases Eric from the Manila Hotel to a road somewhere around the Luneta. (Eric was giving a press conference before going to the airport to go back to the U.S. because Roan had broken up with him. In Philippine movies, the moneyed and the elite always go to America, the “belly of the beast," whenever they are depressed. Always, in movies or in real life.) And then again, all the planets, and needless to mention all the supporting characters, in the universe connive to let the two characters get back into each others’ arms. After professing endless love, the camera begins to recede and show the happy moment from a bird’s eye view that the world is beautiful because – leche! – of love. I used to puke over this kind of ending. But this time, maybe because I find Geronimo cute and I am delightfully disturbed by Anderson’s abs, I found it beautiful. It was beautiful in the sense that it is too much to believe in (in Iloilo, we have a term for this—"bahul"), and too good to be true. Even if you are a severe case of a romantic fool, you won’t believe this could happen in real life. That is why you are there inside the dark cinema staring at the giant screen, your eyes almost falling from their sockets, partaking vicariously of the ideal romantic experience. And here comes the subversive undertone of the movie: Roan and Eric or NGO Worker and First Son or Poor and Elite love affair is only possible in this unimaginative and not so original romantic film. It is not possible in real life because in this country, there is class division and class struggle. The divide between the haves and the have-nots is ever widening due to corruption in the government and the neo-liberal capitalist character of the moneyed and the elite. Just look at what happened to the handsome and sexy James Yap. No matter that he is earning millions now as a professional basketball player, he will always be a poor boy from Escalante, Negros Occidental. He married someone from the political elite and look at what happened to him. Roan will suffer the same fate if the story in the movie becomes reality. The transformation of Eric as a self-centered, party-going presidential son into a responsible and sensitive man concerned with the situation of the poor is also too good to be true. And the most hilarious thing of all is that the president in this movie is very much concerned with the poor and the marginalized. Oh, tell that to PNoy!—a former presidential son and now the president. I really hope that director Cruz and writer Del Rosario are only joking. In Philippine society, the poor and the rich are just like the proverbial oil and water that cannot mix. They live in two different worlds. Come to think of it, this movie should have been entitled “Tubig at Langis," from a favorite Sharon Cuneta song of mine. That would have been a very realistic title for this charming and subversive romantic flick. - YA, GMA News J.I.E. TEODORO is an assistant professor of Filipino at Miriam College. He has won several Palanca awards for his work and a National Book Award for creative nonfiction from the Manila Critics Circle and the National Book Development Board. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from De La Salle University-Manila.