Rom-com, medical-drama modes hit discordant notes
SAM Milby and KC Concepcion in “Forever and a Day.” Should he take time off to work on his Tagalog? Yes, unless he is resigned to just be playing shallow “balikbayan” roles.
Talk about a movie with a twist, Sam Milby and KC Concepcion’s current starrer, “Forever and a Day,” starts out as a breezy rom-com with an “extreme adventure sports” look and feel to it—but ends up as “medical tragedy” tale with KC confronting nothing less daunting than the dreaded Big “C” itself. Alas, despite the production’s best efforts, the production can’t make the ungainly combination work.
Sam undermined
The movie’s first third is freshly diverting due to its “extreme sports” angle, which as yet hasn’t been done to death on the local screen. However, after minutes and minutes of hectic, sporty antics, we get antsy and ask ourselves, “When is this story finally going to get down to brass tracks?”
That turns out to be when the movie finally reveals that KC’s hyper antics are motivated by her desire to make the most out of the little time she has left, due to her terminal illness. Fine, but that dire revelation promptly undermines Sam’s own conflicts, which are partly work-related, and have to do with losing control over a brand of sports shoes he’s designed.
After KC’s much more difficult situation is dramatized, Sam looks like a shallow, whimpering wimp for getting so distraught about his relatively itty-bitty woes. That’s the first ungainly and mismatched element that does the movie in.
The second, the radical shift from rom-com to tragic-drama mode, is even more off-putting—and injurious to the movie’s unity and organic flow. The jarring distention compromises Sam’s performance because he remains on rom-com mode much longer than KC, who is made to modulate to tragedy much earlier.
Discordant styles
Still, her performance also suffers from the production’s relative inability to blend its two discordant styles, which ends up making its treatment of her grave illness too light, un-medical and nominal.
Yes, she gets blisters on her lips and clumps of her hair fall off, but the look and feel are still too glossy and “romanticized” to have a convincingly emotional effect on viewers.
The film’s relative ineptitude appears to be due to the lapse of artistic judgement, which has seduced the production into thinking that it can have its rom-com gloss and its tragic dramatics, too.
A study of other “medical dramas” for the big screen shows that this is a cinematic pipe dream that can’t be achieved, because the two elements are basically at odds in terms of intent and style.
To make things worse, Sam adds his continuing difficulty with Tagalog to the movie’s insufficiencies. Yes, he’s “improved” in this regard, but improvement won’t do when competence is required.
What to do?
So what is the actor to do—stop performing while he works really hard at finally surmounting his problem? Yes, that’s what the situation calls for, and as a professional actor, that’s what Sam needs to do, unless he wants to consign and resign himself to more years of playing shallow balikbayan types.
That would be a real pity, because Sam has come a long way as an actor. For instance, in “Forever and a Day,” he’s physically ultra-believable as the sportsman he portrays, having built up his physique, energy and dynamism really well.
Visual crutch
And in some of the drama’s challenging scenes, he is emotionally “present” and “committed,” unlike his previous starrers, where he just sort of winged it with his dark, good looks, a smile and a prayer.
Oh, yes, that smile—it’s one of the inappropriate visual “crutches” that weakens Sam’s latest portrayal. In dramas, cute smiles even if meant to demote bravery and supportive love are distractions—and even contradictions.
Finally, Sam can really boost the quality and believability of his screen portrayals if he simply decides to slow down his delivery of dialogue, which is generally too fast and even “automatic,” as if he was only too happy and relieved to be done with it.
More sensitive and effective actors take the time to warm up their dialogue with introspection and emotion, and this is what viewers deeply connect with and relate to.
