Sarah Lahbati. PHOTO: FLICKR.COM
Last week, televiewers were alternately treated to or besieged by scenes and performances that exemplified TV programming at its best – and worst. First, the winners:
On “Budoy” last Monday, a montage sequence impressionistically depicting the title character’s amazing mental development made inspired use of seemingly unrelated images, to come up with an eloquently expressive whole.
Montages aren’t easy to pull off, because they’re all about subjective correlations and subtle intimations, but the montage we saw efficiently and insightfully unfolding on “Budoy” was singularly effective.
On the concluding series, “Ikaw Ay Pag-ibig,” some supporting portrayals are coming into their own: The young actress who plays a policewoman and Dimples Romana’s sister impresses with her lack of the usual melodramatic flourishes. She plays her role with directness and focused feeling, and looks like she has a bright future ahead of her – if she sticks to her thespic guns and doesn’t go the way of all flash and flourish, like many of her young contemporaries.
Paulo Avelino is also starting to make good and sensitive sense of his character, the youth who holds the key to the identity and whereabouts of Dimples’ lost son. We hope that he finally breaks through in the series’ concluding episodes.
On “Kokak,” Sarah Lahbati is similarly coming across strongly and sensitively in the title role, despite the shamelessly “over” or dull-as-dishwater portrayals of the actors around her.
Now, for the relative losers: Despite being a gifted actor, Mark Gil is unable to make his character in “Ikaw Ay Pag-ibig” come across in an integral and organic way.
Paulo Avelino. PHOTO: sssip.wordpress.com
What seems to be the problem? Our hopefully educated guess is that the “villain” side to his character is being overworked and done to death, to fill the show’s melodramatic requirements for vileness and viciousness.
The series has unfairly heaped most of its villainy and evil on Mark’s character’s head, so he ends up too unrelievedly monstrous to be understandable and believable.
Wear and tear
As a whole, the otherwise viewable and inspiring show is also betraying signs of wear and tear due to what is called in the scriptwriting trade as “insufficient and inefficient rising action.” As the story is fast heading for its denouement, too many new characters and subplots are making it difficult to clearly and illuminatingly ascend to its thematic and dramatic conclusion.
At this late and even penultimate stage, viewers don’t need to have to contend with and “process” new characters and complications, they want to focus on the main conflict as it reaches its climax in a hopefully empathetic and meaningful way.
The series’ child characters are also coming off less than believably, because they’re made to mouth dialogue that’s too “knowing” and “wise” for kids to naturally intone.
This is particularly a problem for Xyriel Manabat, who has been too voluble, verbose and “old” in two shows one after another – “100 Days to Heaven” and now, “Ikaw.” Give the poor girl a break, allow her to act and talk like the kid she is, why don’t you?
Finally, it’s becoming clearer that, of the series’ four young leads, it’s Zaijian Jaranilla who has the biggest impediment to contend with in relation to relatively poor enunciation. He’s a sensitive young actor, but he sometimes speaks not all that clearly – a problem that his young co-actors don’t have.