Insufficient believability fritters away new ‘teleserye’s’ strong advantage

The newest teleserye on the tube, “Nasaan ka, Elisa,” top-bills Melissa Ricks as the initially “sweet” but actually conflicted and complicated niña bonita of a very wealthy man (Albert Martinez). His illusion of a happy and privileged life is quickly betrayed and sundered when his favorite daughter vanishes at a nightclub.

Her disappearance not only terrifies her loving parents and relatives, but all too soon reveals that their clan is not as united and loving as it pretends to be.

For one thing, one of her cousins turns out to be her secret squeeze – and he’s isn’t her only “playmate.” Will the real Elisa come forth and reveal who she really is?

“Nasaan ka, Elisa” makes a positive first impression, because its storytelling is initially economical, terse and fluid. Most local drama series start with an agonizingly (and boringly) long “back story” that spans several generations in the melodramatically murky past, but “Elisa” starts in the here and now, thus galvanizing viewers’ attention and interest from the get-go.

Unfortunately, that strong advantage is frittered away by some lead portrayals that fall short on point of believability and creativity.

For one, Albert Martinez plays Elisa’s doting dad with precious few concessions to the right age and maturity. He’s still trying to come across as handsome and charming and debonair, when he should be focusing more on convincing us of his character’s wealth and power.

Vina Morales plays his scheming sister with similar infelicities. Yes, we know that her character is scheming and glamorous, but what else is she? How did she become such a prematurely rancid and evil backroom manipulator and prospective power behind the throne? The actress is too busy trying to look as retroactively zaftig as she can to pay enough attention to such motivational subtleties.

Callow portrayals

As for the young actors who play Elisa’s cousins, they fall even farther off the mark with their callow portrayals, which are long on volume and “guilty” stares, but woefully short on the emotional “information” and “investment” we urgently need to understand why they have turned out to be such peevish and insufferable imps.

That’s par for the course for local TV-film starlets: They take their characters at merely face value (“mabait ako dito” or “sa loob ang kulo ko dito”), without bothering to thematically and emotionally try to figure out the empathetic whys and wherefores of their sullen human condition.

To make things worse, when the kidnap investigators are called in to determine Elisa’s whereabouts and to rescue her, they turn out to be led by a young hunk who comes across as a hirsute looker, but not a savvy thinker. So, his discoveries feel more scripted than believably achieved through inspired and brilliant sleuthing.

On the plus side, the series’ action scenes are appropriately exciting and visually charged. Now, if only the production could also get its actors to believably create and inhabit its putative world of internecine cupidity and duplicity, viewers would care enough about what really happened to the series’ missing protagonist to keep on watching.