PADILLA. Comes into his own in “Crazy, Beautiful You.”
AT first glance, Mae Cruz Alviar’s “Crazy, Beautiful You” appears to be an acting showcase for its female lead, Kathryn Bernardo, who has the most “eventful” role in the film. She plays a troubled teen who bears a grudge against her mother, portrayed by Lorna Tolentino, for “deserting” her many years ago.
To compensate for the vacuum left in her “abandoned” psyche, Kathryn’s character lives a hectic, self-centered life. To knock some sense into her head, when her mother comes back home, she requires Kathryn to join her in a medical mission to a community of Aetas in the Pinatubo area.
She’s strictly “supervised” by the Mayor’s son, played by Daniel Padilla, who has many family problems of his own, but has risen above them—because he has to focus on taking care of his younger siblings, due to their mother’s (Assunta De Rossi) irresponsible ways.
Thus, for much of its progression, the film underscores the contrast between Kathryn’s frenetic and self-centered behavior, and Daniel’s much more stable persona.
Due to this clear preference in terms of attention-calling scenes, Kathryn holds stage center on point of storytelling, and the impact of her “feisty” performance on viewers.
In the process, however, the time comes when her portrayal becomes too hectic and nasty to be empathetic, and ends up as a turn-off. —She’s so irritatingly smug and demanding that we wonder why anybody would want to have anything to do with her!
Contrastingly, Daniel often comes across as the less dynamic and thus more predictably “normal” part of the film’s stellar equation.
Breakthrough scene
Most instructively, however, during the movie’s final third segment, he slowly but surely comes into his own as the movie’s best thespian. His “breakthrough” scene is all the more impressive because it’s rigorously controlled: It comes when his irresponsible mother is surprised to see him crying, and she asks him what his problem is.
Daniel quietly but feelingly chides her for her wastrel ways, and for expecting him to pick up the pieces all the time, when it’s her job to be the caring, nurturing parent.
Other actors would opt to act up a storm with the key, revelatory scene, but Daniel has become so confident as an actor that he pulls the difficult scene off with control and good thespic judgment. The strong and deep emotions are there, but they’re simply felt, instead of being self-servingly and melodramatically played up.
After that quietly impressive achievement, we now see that Daniel can be much more than just another “baaaad” Padilla screen toughie and charmer.
His handlers should follow up on this telling achievement by lining up a solo drama or action-drama starrer for him, to definitively build on his newly earned reputation as one of our best young TV-film actors.
On the other hand, Kathryn did too much in their film and her performance ended up as too hectic and edgy to be a clearly focused portrayal. In her next starrer, she must make it a point to do less, so that she can go deeper.
For good measure, she should also get rid of some distracting tics and bad habits in performance, like constantly fixing and fussing around with her hair, even in emotional scenes—where she should be focused on deeper, more natural and less nervously fussy behavior!