February 4, 2022
Conrado Alonzo (Joko Diaz) was a happily-married family man and bigshot real estate businessman. One day, his high school age daughter Ana (Madelaine Red) introduced him to her new transferee classmate Beth (Ayanna Misola). Beth soon began texting Conrado, enticing him with spicy messages and nude pictures. Soon they would have an arrangement to meet each other every 15th and 30th of each month for their secret sexual rendezvouses.
The main plot is quite slim, littered with several sexual encounters between very nude Beth and a fully-clothed Conrado. Director GB Sampedro fluffed up the running time with various other sex scenes. Aside from his voluptuous wife Melba (Jamilla Obispo), Conrado would also have careless dalliances with his employee Karen (Janelle Tee).The lusty Beth also engaged in intimate lesbian canoodling with her friend Carla (Angela Morena).
The acting was not really something to talk about. Joko Diaz's character Conrado was the one being tempted, but it did not really take much for him to give in to it so there wasn't really much mental torment. Ayanna Misola was only 20 year old in real life, because she looked more mature than that with all that makeup. Being only in her second film, she was not still not able to make the most of the psychiatric aspect of her character.
We see several of Joko Diaz's contemporaries in the 90s here, like Kier Legaspi (as Conrado's partner Mike), Jojo Abellana (as Conrado's star salesman Miguel), Jao Mapa (as Beth's father) and even Jeric Raval (as a murder victim in the opening scene). Much time and dialog was focused on Conrado's loyal, strict, old-maid secretary Sita (Marissa Sanchez), but this character actually went nowhere.
Underlying all the sex scenes were serious mental health issues which led Beth down her road to hell. She was not very discreet that she was taking pills for depression. There were recurrent flashbacks to a certain very traumatic event in her past that would haunt her for the rest of her life. There wasn't much psych explanation about Conrado's inability to resist having an affair with a minor, perhaps suggesting that men are naturally weak that way. 2/10.
Camille estrabillo
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