The Director of Alone/Together Staple the Maturity of LizQuen and Their Characters Like One
Like her equally feted filmmakers today, writer-director Antoinette Jadaone never runs out of stories to weave and tell them to serve important objectives: capture the behavior of the new generation of viewers, mirror their perspectives and preferences, and at times even tell why their supposed freedom and self-entitlements they use and abuse can lead to their personal turmoils. But Jadaone’s storytelling and directing extract something more: her stories’ happiness and unhappiness become relatable for everybody most especially if it’s….love we are talking about. They bear “hurtful” or “masakit love stories” we sometimes prefer to forget yet still need to face. Characters confront us with dialogues and situations where love left them… and us.
That Thing Called Tadhana and Never Not Love You need only be enumerated to affirm the baggage we must nod from to love better next time. In her latest and first movie for 2019, she teams up with her dream love team, LizQuen, for a dream project, Alone/Together. Its title alone conjoins contrasting words demarcated by a slash already provokes what has been once there….or gone astray. Now that the movie is already shining even before it opens to theaters on the eve of Valentine’s Day, its beauty makes you wary of at least: a plotline of two college sweethearts who parted ways for their choices in life. Then brings us to its question: What if they continued something promising while still studying? What went wrong? Was something they ended really ended? Were the goodbyes signal to realize their dreams and ambitions in life? What explanations will Christine (Liza Soberano) and Rafael (Enrique Gil) give each other should they chance upon each other years after? All these just make Alone/Together very exciting to watch, rousing us to anticipate.
Taking the milieu of the U.P Diliman campus and its studentry lifestyle, Jadaone says “I am from U.P. So I made the movie like a love letter to my college days. So iyung story will start from there, tapos magkakaroon ng pagbabago along the way. So kasama dito yung milieu ng U.P., iyung pagkain ng isaw, pagrenta ng computer, paggawa ng maraming research, pagsakay ng UP Ikot, ginamit ko in general to set the tone ng college life”. Then she adds that to show the development of the characters, she infused her habits and activities when she was a U.P Coed. “When I’m blogging back in college, naisip ko na mas gusto ko iyung realities na mas masakit kase mas totoo. Mas magagamit ko iyun para mas makatotohanan ang storying isusulat ko or eventually idi-direk ko”.
With how Christine and Rafael viewed love while they were in college, time becomes an essential factor why they changed, started to live different lives and threaded different paths. Gradually both characters faced their own realities. “Alam nating lahat na when you’re in college, marami kang gusting gawin di ba? You want to change the world, gusto mong mag-revolutionize ng mga bagay-bagay. But when you get your diploma and get to the real world, you become disillusioned. So you will face your limitations. Kung baga, you will make a new start. Wala ka na sa eskuwela eh. This applies not only to U.P students but sa lahat ng college students in general”.
Here is where the maturity of the LizQuen loveteam will become very noticeable and entices us more. If the fans and viewers ask how mature they are now, the director pastes the LizQuen appeal with Christine and Rafael. “I think kapag sinabing mature, eh may kissing scene, may sex, naglalampungan sila. Pero ang pinakita kong sense of maturity na meron na sila eh swak na sa characters. Mga bagay na iisipin nila, like traffic sa Pilipinas, mga bayarin or bills, paano ako makaka-ipon. Iniisip na ang career pathing. Reflection yun ng realities they are facing after college. At kadikit doon iyung pag level up ng loveteam nila. So wala nang pa sweet-sweetan. Iyun para sakin is how confident Liza and Enrique over their responsibilities sa roles nila sa movie. Nag evolve na sila pati characters nila”.
While spoilers are always irresistible to everyone, while repelled by people who has not seen a highly anticipated movie when it runs in theaters, what Alone/Together leads to is not something anyone can expect when you are seeing a pair of beautiful actors who infuse us with aspirations. “The story leading to its ending can either give you hope. Puwede naman yun. But you cannot expect eh. Hindi ka puwede maniguro sa mga bagay-bagay pag dating sa pagmamahalan. The characters made mistakes and learn from the past, you will also question many things about love and how it changes you”. Should this mean that love can either be a traitor or a redeemer, we will see two people who were once involved to be the ones to also decide after a long time….what is still or not anymore…possible.
As reported to Ted Claudio by Wilbur F. Hernandez
