Limitations weigh down Sarah Lahbati’s comeback bid

LAHBATI. More to thespic creativity than “efficiency.”

We’re glad that Sarah Lahbati has resolved her differences with GMA 7 and is now facing the TV cameras again. However, for her comeback starrer, she’s been lent to TV5 for the TV movie, “More Than Words.”

We caught its telecast recently, and can share that it dramatizes the seemingly endless ordeal of a “stammerer” (Alice Dixson), whose vocal impairment has severely abridged her life prospects, to the extent that she hasn’t even learned how to read and write.

To make things worse, she gets pregnant and gives birth, but loses her love child when a so-called friend’s husband sells her daughter (played as a young adult by Lahbati) to a wealthy man (Ariel Rivera) whose wife is barren.

Reminder

For over a decade, Alice’s character looks for her estranged child, who grows up loved by her adoptive father—but hated by his wife (Jackielou Blanco)—because the little girl serves as a daily reminder to her of her inability to give her husband a child!

Sarah’s character loves her adoptive mom, but is hurt by her inexplicable hatred, and thus grows up “problematic”—and a rocker, to boot.

Happily, she regains her self-worth when she’s asked to teach female convicts how to read and write. Alice is one of them and Sarah finds herself especially drawn to her, for some strange reason (of course, viewers know perfectly why).

From there, it’s only a matter of time before the by now communicative and expressive Alice is able to look for her missing daughter more purposively, and Sarah even helps her in the daunting task.

The fact that the audience knows that Sarah is Alice’s daughter naturally makes this part of the storytelling particularly poignant and heart-wrenching.

Director Jon Red is able to take advantage of this ironic twist’s emotional possibilities. Another plus point is his ability to “open up” the TV movie and make it feel not as constricted as some similar productions.

However, on point of performance, the production is sometimes not up to snuff. For one thing, Alice doesn’t pull off her character’s being “utal” all that naturally, and both she and Sarah aren’t able to make their dramatically challenging portrayals fully “bloom.”

Possibilities

By this, we mean that they rely too much on following the script and not enough on vivifying its other “unspoken” possibilities by way of their more involved and involving portrayals. In other words, they’re too “efficient,” and more experienced and better actors know that there’s more to thespic creativity than that.

In addition, Sarah has another limitation to contend with: she’s lovely and sensitive and “a bit daring,” but her performance is too “clean,” laid-back and not as “committed” as it should be.

All sorts of dire emotional challenges face her character, but her reactions to them don’t take over her entire being, as they should. So, instead of hitting the right thespic mark, she ends up just a bit below it, and we sense with dismay that she isn’t quite “in” the moment.

That’s really too bad, because the role gives her so many opportunities to passionately and “messily” come into her own as a young actress.

Well, let’s hope that Sarah watches this TV movie again and again, to see for herself where she fell short—and what more, much more, she can do when another beautifully challenging opportunity presents itself for her to really sink her teeth into!