November 28, 2024
It is 2024, five years after Joy (Kathryn Bernardo) left Ethan (Alden Richards) in Hong Kong to seek a better future for herself in Canada. One day, Joy was at the airport in Calgary to pick up her friend Uno (Kevin Kreider). Then, surprise surprise, Ethan and best friend Jhim (Joross Gamboa) had just arrived and were also just going out of the airport. This meeting was quite cold, as it turned out, Ethan was now Joy's ex.
From there, director Cathy Garcia-Sampana went back and forth in time to tell the back story of an earlier visit of Ethan to Canada in 2020, and how it led in a breakup so bad that that bitter feelings of Joy against Ethan persisted so strongly up to the present. For her, Joy is no more, and she now went by the name of Marie. She was now a caretaker at a nursing home and working on a nursing degree.
Like another film shown earlier this year, "Maple Leaf Dreams," this film was also an introduction for the Filipino audience about immigration to Canada. You'd be hearing various acronyms used in the process, like LMIA (Labour Market Impact Assessment), PR (Permanent Resident), or HCA (Health Care Assistant), peppered in their dialogue. Stereotypical scenes of cleaning toilets and bullying by fellow Pinoys were predictably present.
The terrible impact of the COVID-19 on struggling immigrants in Canada was also integrated into the story. Their situation was already difficult as it is, accepting any sort of work, even those way beneath their education and abilities. No matter how menial the job or cramped the living quarters, they patiently swallowed their pride for all the disgusting tasks and low-blow insults everyday, just to get by financially. We've seen scenes like this before as well.
The formula of the first film "Hello Love, Goodbye" was pretty much followed here. Only Joross Gamboa is back as Jhim, while their other old gangmates show up in Zoom cameos. In their place, there are new set of wacky Canadian-based friends played by Valerie Concepcion, Ruby Rodriguez and Jennica Garcia (whose character Baby would have a big crush on Ethan). Like before, Joy also cared for a woman with dementia, Martha (Wendy Froberg).
This film relied heavily on the acting and chemistry of its lead stars Kathryn Bernardo and Alden Richards to propel it beyond its familiar premise, and the two certainly delivered. For me, the story teetered when Marie made one sudden, reckless, and unrealistic decision very much against her character at that point in time. It took all of Bernardo's star power to pull the film through after that, and based on the phenomenal box office, she succeeded. 6/10
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