Vivamax: Review of HIBANG: Another Amnesia Anticlimax

January 2, 2024

Issa (Rica Gonzales) was having a nightmare that she was running away from a man chasing her. When she woke up, she saw that she was startled that she was lying beside a man. He introduced himself as Tristan (Ali Asistio), her husband for the past five years. He told her that in the first year of their marriage, she had been attacked by a stalker. Upon her recovery, she could not remember that they had been married at all.

For the next few days, Tristan tried to prove to Issa that they had been man and wife for five years. They had been hiding in this house in a remote place, without phone signal or internet access. Tristan also showed Issa a video of the two of them together in bed, and even an actual sex video of the two of them.  Of course, being a Vivamax film, Tristan eventually convinced Issa enough, then seduced her to have sex with him.  

This film is the directorial debut of Sigrid Polon, telling a story she came up with and a screenplay she co-wrote. A review of her experience as a filmmaker reveals that she had been in multiple aspects of several films, mostly Vivamax. In front of the camera, she had been playing minor roles in more than 10 films. Behind the camera, she started from being a PA and Script Continuity Supervisor, then later progressing to Assistant Director, now Director. 

Amnesia is a very overused trope, but it did serve to make the real situation between Issa and Tristan a mystery. However, Polon decided to cut the suspense and reveal the real score within the first 30 minutes. Then, she began to tell the whole Issa-Tristan backstory, starting from their days together in Colegio de San Juan de Dios, interweaving scenes of what was happening in reality, and those fantasies going on in Tristan's wild imagination.

Vivamax resident jock Ali Asistio had to turn on his serious acting mode to play an obsessed computer nerd, thought not always successful. As the exotic beauty Mela, Sahara Bernales got to do more than her single scene in her first film "Salakab." Rica Gonzales is being introduced in her very first film, Vivamax or otherwise, and she gets to play lead right away. She isn't shy in showing off her goods, but her acting skills still has a long ways to go. 4/10.