Just a Stranger (2019)

"Not a typical Filipino Love Story Movie"

The story is definitely extraordinary, not a typical Filipino movie where every scene is predictable. Adultery is a mortal sin, especially having an affair that is half of your age, but, this movie able to show a different perspective and positive message why other people committed adultery.

Every scene gives different emotions, the unexpected ending of the movie will make you teary eyes. The catastrophe of two people loving each other was highlighted. Seeing the person you love in a tragic moment is indeed suicidal, particularly when they need you the most, but you can't be with them.

There's a lot of thing that movie can offer to the viewer. It tackles some issues that we are facing today, such us aggressive teenagers, how parents raise their child, common problems of wife and husband, and even how a certain individual can stand with their own ground based on their decision making.

Another master piece for Jason Laxama. Kudos to Anne Curtis and Marco Gumabao.

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A Portrayal of the Human Struggle and Looking for Happiness

I remember seeing the trailer for this movie back in 2019 where the line “We’re both going to pay for this” that Anne Curtis says as she and Marco Gumabao’s character kiss stuck with me, and it was only a day ago that I managed to watch it.

Filipino movies have this certain vibe that screams “Filipino-made”, which doesn’t necessarily make it bad but rather that it’s tailored specifically for a Filipino audience. Duh. But in this movie, it has this quality to it that I can’t quite place—in a good way. The cinematography, the background music, the ambience, the plot—all of it is so good that I can see it being viewed by an international audience.

The plot deviates from the usual story that involves an affair between two people in relationships of their own. You usually expect a catfight and those intense confrontation scenes that Filipinos have come to love because of their exchanges. However, this doesn’t involve any such confrontation. I would say it’s a tad bit realistic in this way and made me adore it because, while I love confrontation scenes, they feel like fantasies you play out in your head (we even see a similar fantasy play out in our protagonist’s head). While there are certainly tense confrontations where you get those savage lines, what mostly happens is existing in the mundane with a stiff upper lip.

Let me preface this paragraph by saying we know all of this beforehand. Mae, played by Anne Curtis, is the movie’s main character. She is the trophy wife of her older businessman husband, Phil Pimentel, played by the ever-intimidating Edu Manzano. Mae begins an affair in Portugal with nineteen-year-old Jericho, who is played by Marco Gumabao. What surprised me a little—and this may be a fault of mine—is Anne Curtis’ acting. I’m used to seeing her be comedic, so as a result, I probably stayed away from any of her works because I thought she just wouldn’t be suitable for these dramatic roles. Boy, I was proven so wrong! She was so phenomenal in this film that I honestly was baffled. I only know Marco from one of his works, Los Bastardos, and he was good there. If I remember right, he was twenty-five when they filmed this, but he portrayed the role of a nineteen-year-old so well.

Some fool in me thought everything would work out, like in one of those Filipino movies I saw. It was The Other Woman, where, in the end, they were all blissful after everything worked out in their favour. While I wanted that, I think that would not have been the correct ending for the film. The film did such a great job in making me attached to the characters to the degree that I didn’t even realise that when the ending happened, I was legitimately left speechless with my hand over my gaping mouth. Which only means that it achieved what it set out to do.

The themes it tackles are one of the reasons I ended up loving the movie as much as I did: A teenager's plight in standing his ground to his overbearing parents and a trophy wife's unhappiness because she is stuck in a loveless marriage. Teenagers struggle with pleasing themselves while also keeping their family's expectations met. Meanwhile, a good chunk of marriages nowadays involve lovelessness and looking for happiness elsewhere as a consequence. I would also consider this to be a commentary on the dangers of the less-than-stellar areas of the Philippines.

I love how the film swerves away from the blueprint of movies with a similar premise to this. I love how this film doesn’t feature a confrontation scene with those iconic lines since it focuses on the human struggle of biting your tongue and enduring it all because it is what it is. I love it whenever I find media that represents humanity for what we all are: beautifully flawed. The only reason that its rewatch value is at five is because I want to spare myself the pain, not because it's bad but because it hurts.

I would recommend this to anyone curious, and while I can’t guarantee that you’d love it the same way I did, I can at least hope you’d enjoy it.

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