WON'T LAST A DAY WITHOUT YOU Review
A
romantic comedy that seeks to reinforce the love team between
singer-turned-actress Sarah Geronimo and Big Brother housemate-turned-matinee
idol Gerald Anderson, Raz de la Torre's Won't
Last a Day Without You does not stray far from the established story map and
intention of a merchandized movie. It is feel-good, fun, funny, and extremely
charming, like most of what Star Cinema has been mindlessly producing the past
several years. The film is undoubtedly a product of formula, and quite
surprisingly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
De
la Torre is not exactly a newcomer. He wrote Cathy Garcia-Molina's A Very Special Love (2008) and co-wrote
with other writers Garcia-Molina's You are
the One (2006) and You Got Me (2007),
two romances set in very distinct milieus that somehow added color and novelty
to the film's otherwise redundant storylines. In A Very Special Love, a hopelessly hopeful employee falls for her
stern boss who is up to prove himself to his family by making his men's
magazine number one. In You are the One,
the familiar romance is set within the world of bureaucratic red tape, an
unfortunate circumstance that fortunately gives a glum American who is looking
for his parents the opportunity to meet and fall for a government employee. You Got Me is essentially a love
triangle between a lady cop, a nerdy officer, and a thief.
Won't Last a Day
Without You,
like the rest of the films that De la Torre penned for Garcia-Molina, is set in
a very specific niche of the Filipino experience. DJ Haidee (played radiantly
by Geronimo) is the heartbreak guru for a late night radio show that gives love
advice to romantically challenged insomniacs. At home, she sheds her screen name
and becomes George Harrison Apostol, daughter to rock legend Pablo Apostol
(Joey de Leon), sister to up and coming rockers, and victim to an ex-boyfriend
who replaced her for her best friend. One night like all the other nights where she
disparages playboys and heartbreakers on air, she advises Melissa (Megan
Young), a listener who becomes fed up with the flirtatious ways of her
boyfriend (Anderson), to terminate the relationship, not knowing that that night's
advice would lead her to rediscovering the pleasures of falling in love.
The
world that De la Torre sets his romance in is addicted to love. This is a world
of late-night workers, of students studying in the wee hours of the morning, of
night-owls, all of whom spend their evenings either struggling through their
current love problems or quenching their thirst for romance through the
disembodied voices sharing their misery to the world. This is a world that has
gone cynical because of the abundance of heartaches and heartbreaks. It is a
world that is ripe and perfect for that sudden change of perspective, a
miracle. The film, moving in the way like most romantic comedies of its like do
which is predictably towards a happily-ever-after ending instead of a more
realistic conclusion, feels apt in its both its manner and motivation. Its
insistence on love's perfection is an aberration in its milieu characterized by
the advertisement of love's pains and treacheries.
Won't Last a Day
Without You culminates
in the revelation of DJ Haidee as someone as normal as the rest of the city who
rely on her for certain logic in their romance. It climaxes in the revelation
of love as not a private concern pertaining only to the lovers involved. It is
has other stakeholders. It also involves the rest of the world who are either
in love or in love with being in love, rendered into a community by the
airwaves that have brought their needs and concerns in overwhelming union.
Admittedly, like the Carpenters' song from which it borrows its title, the film
is more sap than substance. However, there is definitely nothing stopping
anybody from being beholden to its adorable whims and charms.
(Cross-published in Lessons from the School of Inattention.)