‘Nagsimula sa Puso’ REVIEW: A half-hearted bore
‘Nagsimula sa Puso’ REVIEW: A half-hearted bore
Carlo (Richard Gomez) and Celina’s (Hilda Koronel) portraits in a heart-shaped locket.
Nagsimula sa Puso? More like Nagsimula sa Libog—in both the Bisaya (confused) and Tagalog (lust) sense of the word. Smothered in steam but empty everywhere else, Nagsimula sa Puso is an annoying bore.
The premise is as ripped-from-the-headlines as you can get. Suffocated by her overbearing mother (Armida Siguion-Reyna), college professor Celina (Hilda Koronel) involves herself in a dalliance with her ruggedly handsome student Carlo (Richard Gomez). Things, however, take a sour turn when, during one of the couple’s weekend getaways, Celina’s mother arranges for Carlo’s arrest under the false charge that he kidnapped her. Afraid of staining her reputation, Celina goes along with her mother’s scheme, lying through her teeth during the court trial. Years later, Carlo returns with a vengeance, eager to get rid of Celina’s new husband Jim (Jay Ilagan) and son Jimboy (Geneve Aragon) and have his ex-girlfriend all to himself.
It’s a pulpy plot, sure, but it’s ripe with possibility. It’s easy to see the film as a compelling suspense flick in the vein of something like Sa Aking Mga Kamay or perhaps a classic Ricky Lee weepy, imbued with complex albeit sympathetic characters. Quite disappointingly, it ends up becoming neither. You’d have to squint to spot the aforementioned Ricky Lee treatment, which finds itself (if it’s even there) in the character of Chari (Cherie Gil), Jim’s almost-querida who refuses to be a second option despite her devotion to him, or perhaps in the way the man, Carlo, plays the martyr lover instead of Celina. There’s hardly anything more than that, though. Although it attempts to explore the limits of what ‘faithful’ and ‘patient’ love could be, the rest of the plot unfolds lazily, clumsily stuffed with “kneel before me!” showdowns and anti-climactic action scenes that dashes the film’s hopes of becoming a decent thriller.
Celina’s family picture, shattered.
It doesn’t help that the story isn’t told with any conviction. Despite boasting a cast of well-established talents, not one of them seems to be at the top of their game. Richard Gomez is a better pretty face than he is an actor, and his performance, along with his co-stars’ reactions to it, is frustratingly weak. Even Hilda Koronel, darling thespian of Filipino cinema, only shines when she needs to cry. Other times, she’s painfully opaque. There’s hardly any fire in her performance; even when her character is asked to lash out, her rage looks half-baked. The rest feel like cardboards.
This probably has to do with Mel Chionglo’s half-hearted direction. He treats much of the movie like a slog he has to go through, which makes the plot feel less like a story—with characters and events that asks for the audience’s empathy—and more so a checklist of tropes. This stiffness is obvious right from the first act, which rushes through the set-up of Celina and Carlo’s affair until the scenes collide haphazardly into each other. Worsened by the jarring cuts brought about by the economical editing, there seems to be little space for the film to breathe.
Carlo in the shower, lovingly captured by Chionglo’s camera.
The only times when Chionglo allows the film to linger is during scenes that demand sensuality, which comes as no surprise given that his specialty was in sex films (Midnight Dancers and Playgirl, among others). For all its faults, the film finds some footing when characters get steamy. Chionglo’s camera pours special attention to Richard Gomez, capturing the contours of his body, from his hands as they roam around his chest in the shower to his back when it dips during a love scene— perhaps it’s why Gomez earned his (undeserved) first Gawad Urian Best Actor nomination for his performance in this film.
As a whole, Nagsimula sa Puso really doesn’t amount to much. It regurgitates tried-and-tired melodramatic formulas without offering anything new, not in narrative insight or even in performance. It’s a movie that’ll just leave you empty.
Nagsimula sa Puso is available on KTX from April 2 to 10, 2021.
