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Untrue Love
by Philbert Ortiz Dy

On paper, One True Love has a lot of things going for it. The premise is somewhat compelling, and the cast brings in a lot of talent. In practice, however, things don’t work out that way, as a few bad habits rear their ugly heads and leave the film decidedly subpar.

After one year of dating, Migs proposes to his girlfriend, Joy, and she happily accepts. When Migs tells the news to his family, his sister Ara then gives the news to Migs’ first love Bela, who lives in Canada. Bela returns to the country to give their love one last try, but Migs chooses Joy. The day after their wedding, Migs gets into a motorcycle accident. He wakes up with partial amnesia, unable to remember Joy and under the impression that he’s still with Bela. After getting him through physical therapy, Joy does everything she can to bring back his memory, but Migs continues to be drawn to Bela, leaving husband and wife to be strangers in their own home.

The story has a really great hook, but the script doesn’t really have the substance to back it up. While the script gets points for an attempt at emotional sophistication, it ultimately doesn’t go there, painting the characters in broad strokes that just don’t ring true. The character of Bela in particular lacks the consistency needed to let her plight really resonate. It doesn’t help that a lot of the situations in the script aren’t portrayed in a realistic light. It’s difficult enough to accept that a woman who left her boyfriend to go to Canada would suddenly go back to the country on a whim just to disrupt a wedding, but this is also a world where a woman takes a pregnancy test just because she sees one, and a woman won’t call her husband’s phone (or the phone of the person she suspects him to be with) when he goes missing. A myriad of plot holes keep the film from rising emotionally, as it feels like the choices of the characters were made just for the convenience of the filmmakers.

The film suffers from tone as well. Practically every scene in this film is undercut by a soaring score that really does nothing for the entire picture. It’s like they don’t trust their own material, leaning on the score to tell people how they’re supposed to feel. It’s terribly annoying, and it hampers the film from letting its action rise. When every scene feels the same, the movie suffers as a whole. There are a few technical hiccups as well. The color grading shifts from shot to shot, which is just a baffling mistake. Movies with a fraction of this film’s budget don’t make that mistake. The film gains a few points in the acting department, though they’re pretty hard won as well. There’s somewhat of a soap opera feel to the production, which affects the acting as well. It just doesn’t feel as good as it could be, had the actors been given room to find a more genuine place to start from. Marian Rivera turns in a pretty decent performace. Iza Calzado is still one of the finest actors on our shores, though her character has most definitely gotten in the way of her performance. Dingdong Dantes makes a pretty good leading man, even if he tends to fall back on the same three tricks to get his point across.

Honestly, I came into the theater ready to love One True Love. I was intrigued by the premise, and Iza Calzado is just about my favorite actress. But this film just betrayed me at every turn, with glaring technical deficiencies and absolutely baffling scripting choices. It’s frustrating, because it feels like the pieces were all there, but the filmmakers just didn’t care enough to put them all together, instead choosing to just take the most convenient path to a completed movie. That never produces anything good.