A heart where it should be

MATTEO Guidicelli and Maja Salvador

Enrico Santos’ rom-com, “My Cactus Heart,” has two protagonists, played by real-life sweethearts Maja Salvador and Matteo Guidicelli, who are both saddled with flawed parents, but deal with that problem in vastly different ways.

Maja’s dad’s absence has made her a tough, little cynic who specializes in breaking suitors’ hearts. Matteo opts to be more optimistic and open to love and life’s possibilities and surprises.

Given this disparity, Matteo has to work very hard to get past Maja’s prickly “cactus heart,” so they can claim the love that they both deserve.

This is a theme worth mulling over, so we sustain our focus on the storytelling, despite a number of distractions.

First, it’s weakened by the linear device of looking back into the past to help explain the present. The use of flashbacks saps the movie of some vitality and dynamism, which the production tries to compensate for by constantly being perky and trendy, with occasional use of animation and more frequent employment of determinedly with-it characters.

The ploys are occasionally effective, but more distractions present themselves, like the awkward sequencing of a major plot point (Matteo’s decision to work abroad) just before he stages an elaborate date, during which he pledges undying love to his inamorata.

If his love is so deathless, why does he surprise her with the burden of having to wait for a couple of years before they can truly claim their happiness together?

Other plot twists and turns are more effective, like the revelation that there’s more to the death of his mother than first surmised. That these discoveries are made toward the end of the movie makes for eventful storytelling that keeps the denouement edgy, and requires the viewer to creatively, proactively, adjust his take on the shifting “reality.”

After the dust has settled, Maja’s character learns to stop protecting herself from getting hurt—because this creates an attendant pain of its own—and dares to act and claim her love.

Maja’s portrayal is sometimes too cutely confused to be truly insightful, but she eventually compensates by getting her role’s big, albeit belated, character change exactly right.

Matteo is also friskily sincere and entertaining, but his “puppy” portrayal makes less of a solid impression, because he’s concerned more with form than with substance. He gets his revelation scene when the mystery surrounding his mother is clarified, but it’s a bit too late for genuine catharsis and hubris to transpire.

Even less effective is the character of Xian Lim, who is also smitten by Maja’s. He’s onscreen so seldom that he ends up almost like an afterthought—not a good follow-up to his star-making turn on the recently concluded “My Binondo Girl” teleserye.

Summing up, “My Cactus Heart” has some distractions (like Matteo’s tacky wig or ponytail hair extension), but its central theme is valid and sometimes vivified—and its (cactus) heart is in the right place.