October 26, 2022
Wedding dress designer Joan (Cristine Reyes) raised her daughter Sarah (Xia Vigor) as a single mother after her husband died at a young age. They had frequent dinners together with her brother Jun (Jeffrey Hidalgo), his wife Heidi (Lara Morena) and their children. Joan had tension with another sister, Mean (Andrea del Rosario), who blamed Joan for the death of their mother who did not approve of Joan's choice of husband.
Sarah dropped out of ballet class because she was being bullied by her former best friend Gina (Phoebe Villamayor in full-on Gladys Reyes mode), and chose to take up martial arts instead under coach Gio (McCoy de Leon). Even if she did not have friends, Sarah did not mind because she believed that she will always have her mother on her side. However, Joan already knew that her time with daughter would not be too long anymore.
This Viva movie is yet another Filipino adaptation of a Korean film, after "The Housemaid," "A Hard Day" and just very recently "Always." Again, there was already a ready story formula which they simply had to follow for sure box office success. The melodramatic plot and conflicts of "Wedding Dress" (2010) were actually quite universal, so this was something a Filipino writer could have come up with on their own, but did not.
Cristine Reyes and Xia Vigor certainly had their characters wrapped around them. In sharp contrast to their last screen roles -- Reyes as a politician's assertive daughter and Vigor as a spirited girl smuggled into prison -- both of them were very quiet and restrained here as introverts who would rather suffer in silence. The all-important believable chemistry as mother and daughter was there, with that formal dance scene showing it best.
The way the drama was built up by director Dado Lumibao, the climactic mortal moment did not exactly have the tear-jerking effect it was supposed to have anymore, providing no satisfying catharsis for me. Perhaps, there were so many distracting side threads being woven into the mix (like that karate thing or even the wedding gown itself), or maybe I had been steeled and ready for that sad ending since very early on in the film. 5/10.
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