Review of CARA X JAGGER: Forgive to Forget

November 8, 2019

Cara (Jasmine Curtis-Smith) ran a successful events coordination company with her two close married friends Yani (Gabby Padilla) and Joseph (Dino Pastrano). She had a condition called hyperthymesia, which meant that she could remember details of everything that happened in her life down to the precise dates and time, as well as the corresponding emotions attached to these events. She was the girl who could never forget.

Jagger (Ruru Madrid) was a cool hotshot motocross riding champion. Following their chance meeting on the train, he eventually became Cara's boyfriend. However, because of an accident on his motorcycle, he suffered from amnesia, forgetting everything except one name -- Cara's. His grandfather, whom they endearing called Papalo (Dante Rivero), requested Cara's help to help Jagger recover the memories he had lost. 

This love story involved a clever contrast of medical conditions. Cara can remember everything, while Jagger forgot everything. Jagger struggled to remember, while Cara struggled to forget. The process of rebuilding Jagger's memories was painful for Cara as she relived both the bitter with the sweet, but it was also eye-opening for her to realize certain aspects of these events which she never saw before. 

As she had consistently been in all her previous films that I had seen, Jasmine Curtis-Smith gave a very natural performance as Cara, which had little or no sense of pretense at all. Everything seemed so sincere and heartfelt. Curtis-Smith's attack on her difficult role was deceptively simple and effortless, but it was really her character Cara which carried the brunt of their emotional roller-coaster as a couple. 

With a completely erased slate, Ruru Madrid's Jagger began as an innocent rediscovering his own past. His challenge was to convince the viewers that this was really how a person with amnesia behaved and it was not an easy task to pull off. Because unpleasant details of memories were only revealed later, it was only in the second half of this film that Madrid had more complex emotions to display with his endless apologies.

This is the third film of director Ice Idanan that I had seen, after "Sakaling Hindi Makarating" (2016, MY REVIEW) and "Stranded" (2019, MY REVIEW). To spice things up, there were silly comedy scenes care of Dino Imperial's Joseph, bitchy villainous scenes care of Michelle Dee's Madz and words of wisdom care of Dante Rivero's Papalo. Given its lyrics, "Leaves" by Ben&Ben was a very appropriate theme song. For me, I would have wanted more detailed results about Cara's final decision than what was shown. 7/10.