ABOUT US BUT NOT ABOUT US: Chaos
07.10.2023
Rating:
10/10
'About Us But Not About Us' is a beautiful chaos that needs to be experienced.
Like 'Teorya ng mga Tanong', a fictional novel from the film itself, is a suffering turned into art. I don't know how else to put this masterpiece which was written and directed by Jun Robles Lana but that is just it. See how great the film is? I have plenty to say when I'm inspired but today is different. I ran out of words to articulate my thoughts as I'm speechless that even the words that I used are from the film itself.
About Us But Not About Us' being a story of just two men having lunch in BGC is a proof of how genius Lana is. Imagine, for an hour and a half, we just listened to Eric/Ericson (played by Romnick Sarmenta) who is a literature professor in UP; and Lance/Lancelot (played by Elijah Canlas), an English literature student of the same school; conversing and yet it putted me to the edge of my seat. There was a point that I didn't know that we are 40 minutes in when it felt like I'm only watching for 10 minutes.
They were just sitting in a restaurant and talked about Eric's relationship with Lance; Lance's life and the things he went through; and of course, they talked about Marcus (played by both of them) - who is Eric's life partner; a highly-acclaimed Filipino writer, who suddenly took away his life.
Yes. Marcus committed suicide. But why? The conversation was simple at first. Until it unraveled the web of lies that the main characters considered their own truths before this royalty of Philippine literature committed suicide.
Elijah Canlas' flips of character is still outstanding. You can definitely see the difference between Lance and Marcus. Mapapanganga ka talaga sa batang to. He is still that chameleon who's brilliance is on a different pedestal. The movie just magnified how talented and how deserving he is to be on the mainstream. Sobrang galing!
However, even though Canlas went head-to-head with Romnick Sarmenta on the first and second phase of the film, the last phase sealed the deal for Sarmenta. He ate Canlas alive! What he gave is a masterclass performance. He crushed me when he flipped to the Marcus character. I was in awe. You don't know how many curses I blunted because of how smooth and effortless his performance is.
Should I wonder why he won the Best Actor award during the 2023 Summer Metro Manila Film Festival? I was expecting a different actor from the same film festival to win. If not him, it was Canlas who I rooted for. Now that I've seen the whole film, Sarmenta has every right to that trophy.
The sweep at the first Summer Metro Manila Film Festival Awards Night; the recognition from the some of the most prominent film festival circuits in the world and the rave reviews that the movie received during its run is totally an understatement.
Lana did let us have it. For me, the movie is one of Philippines' finest and yes, became my personal favorite movie of all time. 10/10.
'About Us But Not About Us' is now streaming in Prime Video. Catch it. It's worth every bit of your time.
#AboutUsButNotAboutUs
*credits to all photo owners
Gš