April 8, 2023
Nico Catapang (Jiad Arroyo) was an aspiring model. He made the rounds of auditions but was not getting any gigs. To save on funds, he rented a room in the house of Analyn Salvacion (Tiffany Grey), a mousy young woman who cared for her paraplegic grandmother Esther (Odette Khan). Analyn had a crush on Nico, and went beyond her duty as landlady to willingly do various chores for him.
However, the promiscuous Nico brought home different women each night, the infatuated Analyn watched his intimate encounters through a one-way mirror. One day, Nico's fiancee Katherine (Robb Guinto) came home from Canada where she worked as a nurse, and stayed with him in his rented room as well. As Analyn realized how much the rascal Nico had been lying and taking her for a ride, she snapped.
With his caddish look on his face, Jiad Arroyo had long been relegated to playing naughty supporting characters, usually antagonists. This film is his first lead role, and it was clear that he was not yet ready for it. He was ostensibly game for all the fully nude sex scenes he had to do with various partners, and he did them with gusto. However, when it came to the scenes which required real acting, he could not really deliver.
Tiffany Grey already had a Best Supporting Actress nomination under her belt for her role in the MMFF 2022 film "My Father, Myself." She has pretty eyes and an innocent-looking face, and she could connect emotionally with her subtle facial expressions. She threw all inhibitions to the wind in her hysterical breakdown scene in the film's climax. She does not really need to go through the bold star route, and hopefully this is her last time.
Writer Quinn Carrillo came up with another psycho-dramatic mix of sex and violence. Director Louie Ignacio's treatment created an atmosphere of suspense, almost horror in the red-filtered scenes. It was remarkable in that it was a woman who was the peeping tom and the man was the sex object being furtively admired. However in the end, everything went back to the same old story of sexual abuse and its effect on the victim's fragile mental health. 2/10.
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