WE DIDN’T know top GMA teleserye creator and writer Suzette Doctolero is also into acting.
We saw her in “Love and Pain Between Refrains”, a guest entry in the 17th Cinemalaya filmfest directed by Jay Altarejos. She played the role of the caring mother of the female protagonist, Elora Espano.
She is quite convincing in that scene where she tries to persuade her daughter to go back home with her because her husband is a wife beater.
We won’t be surprised if we’d see her in a GMA teleserye one of these days, playing the mother of Marian Rivera or Carla Abellana who are her lookalikes!!
Going back to the movie, Jay’s latest movie is vastly different from the usual gay films he did like “Kasal”, “Lihim ni Antonio” and “Lalaki sa Parola”.
This time, it’s about domestic violence. The male protagonist is his resident actor, Oliver Aquino, who we last saw in Jay’s graphic sex-drama about exploited sex workers, “Jino to Mari”, two years ago.
The material is not really new as it has been the subject of other films before, both foreign and local like “Kapag Napagod ang Puso” and “Ika-11 Utos”. But this one is the darkest treatment.
It starts with them exchanging their wedding vows with Elora as Adelle pledging her “forever love”.
But it soon becomes clear that the character of Oliver as Noel, a musician who belongs to a band, is an asshole as he is more concerned with his lost cat than with his very pregnant wife, who is a teacher.
When Adelle invited some co-teachers to their home, he gets unjustifiably jealous.
It’s obvious Noel has such big and serious daddy issues with his domineering and meddlesome dad, Richard Quan, and they nearly come into blows.
This is in the scene where they’re about to have dinner and he loses his control because his dad keeps on yakking and complaining about everything in their household.
You know this will all end in tragedy and the final scenes are difficult to watch. It’s good the movie showed how they meet again by chance on top of an overpass after not seeing each other for ten years.
Then it goes back to the very first scene where the couple exchange wedding vows to show that time when they were still so sweet and loving to each other.
Jay multi-task effectively as writer, editor, producer, production designer and director of “Love and Pain in Between Refrains”.
The film is very well acted by both Oliver and Elora and they both deserve to get better assignments in both film and TV.
