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Once a tentative actress, Maine Mendoza shines as romantic lead in ‘Isa Pa, With Feelings’
While watching “Isa Pa, With Feelings,” a romantic movie directed by Prime Cruz and currently showing in theaters, I remembered interviewing Maine Mendoza on the set of her Eat Bulaga Lenten Special titled “Prinsesa.”
That was in 2017 and to me, that time in her life as an actress and showbiz personality was important. Her first soap opera, “Destined To Be Yours,” also starring Alden Richards, had just started airing.
Before that, Maine topbilled in two movies, and later that year, she would star in the mental health-themed TV movie “Love is…”
It felt like Maine was finally — and rightfully — taking acting seriously. But despite a growing filmography, Maine wasn’t entirely convinced acting was something she could do.
“Syempre, deep inside, gusto ko pang i-push kung hanggang saan yung kaya ko. Pero hindi ko naman talaga kaya, e bakit pa natin pipilitin?” Maine said. “Sobrang pessimist ko no? Pero ganun talaga,“ Maine said at the time.
She added: “Parang sa lahat naman po ng bagay, meron akong pag-aalinlangan. Kasi parang lumaki na ako na ganun ang personality ko na very pessimist and very cynical. Syempre, 'yong acting and 'yong career ko, hindi makakaligtas sa pagiging cynical ko.”
Inside the cinema on opening day, I thought to myself: There was no reason for Maine to feel tentative and cynical about her acting.
In “Isa Pa, With Feelings,” Maine plays Mara. She works for an architectural firm and is about to take the architecture licensure exam. The first few minutes of the film is spent laying it on thick that everyone — her father, her boss — really expects her to pass the exams.
So it does not come as a surprise when — mild spoiler alert — she doesn’t.
Somewhere during the time the film spends setting up Mara to fail, she also meets Gali (played by Carlo Aquino). Gali is her neighbor and — because Mara has a deaf niece — also her sign language teacher. Gali, turns out, is also deaf.
Of course, because this is a romantic movie, Mara and Gali end up developing feelings for each other.
The early parts of “Isa Pa, With Feelings” feel a bit disjointed, as if trying to cross out plot points from a checklist to lay down the foundation of Mara and Gali’s relationship.
It makes you expect that this is your typical romantic movie, maybe about two lovers whose ambitions will drive them apart. That’s what I expected anyway, at least for a while. That’s the kind of story local rom-coms have been telling a lot lately. See, for instance, Alden Richards’ “Hello, Love, Goodbye.” Or “Alone/Together,” a movie from the same producer as “Isa Pa, With Feelings.” These movies tell us that sometimes we have to choose between our love and our dreams.
But “Isa Pa, With Feelings” isn’t that movie. Instead, it shows you a different kind of romantic roadblock — the one you experience when, for most of your life, you have been considered by everyone else around you as an “other,” an outsider.
“I feel like a fish in aquarium because my world is different,” Gali tells Mara. It’s an easy metaphor but it’s also true. Mara doesn’t live in the same world as Gali. More than the fact that Mara is hearing and Gali is deaf, there are societal inequalities both in how Gali is treated by people of hearing and the fewer opportunities he gets in life because he is deaf.
“Isa Pa, With Feelings” is a romantic movie, so it argues that love can help overcome those hurdles. But it also says that love doesn’t — and there lies the movie’s magic.
Here, the lovers don’t choose between love and career or love and ambition. But choosing love doesn’t mean there won’t be problems along the way. Choosing love means putting in the work especially when you deal with the gaps in how different your world is from your partner’s. Love — or, at least, love alone — cannot fix that.
The movie follows Mara’s point-of-view, but it also puts the viewer in Gali’s shoes. When Mara does not understand what Gali is saying through his sign language, the movie makes sure we don’t understand either, making us literally fill in the gaps. We experience how Gali “hears” music. We experience his silence.
Maine shines in “Isa Pa, With Feelings” as she fully commits to the role of Mara. There’s a bit of her signature physical comedy here — the scene where Gali teaches Mara how to sign “flirting” and “manyak, for instance, shows her natural talent as a comedian.
But Maine delivers as a romantic lead. You believe the romance and you feel pain when the strains in Mara and Gali’s relationship start to show.
It seems, with “Isa Pa, With Feelings,” that the once tentative and cynical Maine has finally embraced her work as an actress to give us what feels like a career-best performance. — LA, GMA News
'Isa pa With Feelings' is now showing nationwide
