Breaking up is really hard to do

Angelica Panganiban (left) and Dingdong Dantes

Maryo de los Reyes’ “The Unmarried Wife” deserves the success it’s currently enjoying, with standout portrayals paced by Angelica Panganiban’s contortedly conflicted title protagonist for its prime attraction.

Other plus points include its starkly realistic depiction of the icky, sticky and persnickety problems that bedevil initially loving couples when they fall out of love and want to sever their marital bond.

On the debit side, the film is too talky and takes too long getting its storytelling revved up.

Sluggish start

Since its resident couple’s woes are all too predictable, it makes for a sluggish start before things get more specifically volatile, and genuine interest and viewer involvement kick in.

The film is also too “overpopulated,” with different generations of relatives on both sides getting involved in the marital conflict, and weighing in with their own verbose opinions on the issues involved.

To add to the cacophony, the couple’s friends and their spouses also manage to get more than a word in edgewise, so it really gets to be a major drag.

We know that, in our part of the marital and extramarital woods, this flurry of opinionating does take place, but movie storytelling should be more focused and streamlined, so themes and issues can be clarified beyond the subjective jabber of supporting and cameo characters—pa more.

Fortuitously, some effective and even lovely cinematic moments shine through all the buzz and bother. On point of scripting, one of the best scenes is the one in which Angelica, her estranged husband Dingdong Dantes and their only child are out on a reconciliatory pizza dinner date, and her stalker-lover, played by Paulo Avelino, harangues and threatens her on her cell phone.

To avoid a messy confrontation, she has to pretend to be talking to an office mate about a business problem, so she substitutes “work-related” words and terminology for personal references. The ruse works beautifully and wittily, and the potentially explosive situation is defused!

Unrepentant portrayal

Also to be cited is the “other woman” portrayal turned in by Dingdong’s mistress, “unrepentantly” played by Maricar Reyes, who gives as fiercely as she takes Angelica’s withering tirades.

For his part, Dingdong also does well as the film’s resident “loving louse.” It’s just too bad that his edgily unromantic portrayal isn’t   capped by a suitable extreme character arc. Angelica is given too many breakdown and recrimination scenes, while Dingdong’s character remains sullen and guilty, and doesn’t have an emotionally and psychologically revelatory “breakdown” scene to call his own. Guys, join us in the peeved and peevish chorus: Local romantic dramas are unfair to their male protagonist-antagonists!

All told, “The Unmarried Wife” is most of all a thespic showcase for Angelica, who goes through a veritable gamut of emotions to painfully limn the film’s “contortedly conflicted” protagonist. Her portrayal isn’t perfectious, but the former child and teen star now firmly and decidedly establishes herself as an adult player capable of tackling complicatedly mature themes and scenes, along with the best of our female screen thespians.