Vivamax: Review of DECEPTION: Melodramatic Miss

January 28, 2022

Movie star Rose Alcantara (Claudine Barretto) spent 10 years in jail for the charge of burning down her house, killing her husband, former stuntman Jericho de Jesus (Mark Anthony Fernandez), in it. Her personal assistant Roxie (Juliana Parizkova Segovia) put her four year old child Tom-tom up for adoption without Rose's knowledge and consent.

Upon release, she proceeded to stay with her estranged mother Olivia (Chanda Romero), with whom Rose parted ways before on money issues. While looking for Tom-tom at the Asilo Milagrosa orphanage, she learned that a certain Jonathan and Grace de Juan (Mayton Eugenio) had adopted her son, who was now as 7th grader Eric de Juan (Miggs Cuaderno). 

This new film by director Joel Lamangan is old-fashioned Filipino TV soap-opera melodrama made into a feature film. A mother goes to prison and her son gets adopted. A man who supposedly died in a fire, later reappearing with another look and identity.  How many times have we heard threadbare plots like this, yet here they are again.

The story was supposed to have spanned 10 years, but Claudine Barretto looked exactly the same before and after she got into prison. There was no hardly any subtlety as she went all out in her dramatic scenes as Rose. It may unkind to mention here, her unwieldy physical heft at present distracted from effectivity of her zealous yet misguided performance.

Mark Anthony Fernandez's face looked frozen in a perpetual annoyed grimace. His hair and make-up as Jonathan with the fake-looking beard and long hair with man bun, was utterly atrocious.He also had lines delivered in an awkward-sounding high-pitched voice, which made his over-the-top acting unintentionally comical. 

Can a child really be put up for adoption without the consent of his mother who is known to still be alive? Will a good lawyer really tell a client that she can legally kill her husband again since she had already served a sentence for his murder before? These and many more illogical plot holes boggle the mind as you muddle through the overcooked story.

That senseless scene of how Rose "rewarded" orphanage employee Del (Gerald Santos) for his help was so utterly embarrassing. It boggled my mind why Claudine Barretto allowed herself to do this demeaning scene? Why was a corny scene like this even included at all? It should have been edited out without any consequence to the story. 

This was supposed to have been the big reunion movie of former '90s love team Claudine and Mark Anthony. However, the roles do not really fit them well and they were made to do scenes that did not look for them. Director Joel Lamangan has been known to do melodrama well, but unfortunately for the fans of Claudine, this one was not one of his good ones. 2/10.