The anxiety riled in JP Habac’s “Here and There” (Dito at Doon) is more than just the “will-they, won’t-they” aspect between two strangers, but the uncertainty of when the pandemic will be over.
We did an episode with the cast and crew of Here and There/ Dito at Doon! Watch the live recording here
To say that JP Habac’s film, Dito at Doon (Here and There) is a love story is a huge upset. It is an understatement I dare you to call because it is beyond romance. The premise of the film is that the two strangers commence on a debacle online, one carrying the rage within herself to call out that taking advantage of the pandemic — mingling out in hours where one is supposed to be stuck in the office, working graveyard shifts — is a selfish act, whereas the other contest that we all experience the effects of the pandemic differently, himself coming from a place where he is greatly affected by his distance from his own family. We realize that they might be potential characters in a love story. We also soon realize that it is definitely how the effects of COVID-19 affect us all in a different way.
From Habac’s first film, I’m Drunk, I Love You (2017), we know that his films are crafted from familiar places and yet they go the alternate route once his characters grow outside of the norm of the formula. Like Carson, Janine Gutierrez’s Len is an outspoken, strong-willed being who is raised by a single mom who happens to be a nurse (played by her actual mother, the actress, Lotlot de Leon). She whips rapid-fire quips online at those who turn a blind-eye about the ongoing pandemic. The timing and the situation at which she and her friends played by Victor Anastacio and Yesh Burce, can never be just as accurate, because as of writing the pandemic had just reached it’s anniversary in the country. We see it happening everywhere, anywhere, to anyone. These days it becomes so grim and yet the insensitivity is just as rampant.
Unlike Deo in IDILY, Caloy or Cabs (played by JC Santos) is not the mysteriously confused teenager that toys with the idea of growing up. Caloy is stuck in the anxiety of taking on the mature, responsible role for his family. Hailing from Cebu and living alone in the Metro, he starts to respond to Len’s seemingly one-sided idea of the pandemic. Later on, the two end up having their meet-cute in the most pandemic-friendly way: via Zoom through an online drinking session with two mutual friends. It’s uncanny almost to imagine that someone would conjure a love story at this time of grim and worry, but somehow given Ms. Gutierrez’s approach to the character, more subtle than dreary, she is able to bring us to her emotions of innocence and rage. Mr. Santos, a trained theater and seasoned indie-actor, equips a boyish, next-door appeal. One that can make us understand that he too has a point in all this, and can conjure an entirely different mood the next. It’s an unfortunate yet sweet meet-cute when the two start a budding friendship.
The script made by Alex Gonzalez and Kristin Barrameda (co-writer for Sakaling Maging Tayo) not only equips with the things we acquired during the pandemic (plants, Zoom or video call meetings, face masks, endless alcohol —for drinking and for bacteria, curfew, courier services, Dalgona coffee, cooking elaborate meals through YouTube tutorials) but the concept of locked-in shootings. It seems evident, because unlike films like the aptly titled Locked Down where zoom meetings are taken advantage of for shooting other sequences or other characters, this film transforms that distance into a technique where each characters are physically present in the room. It is up to the viewer to imagine that this is a virtual meeting, but the emotions that transpire behind that screen is evident, and somehow it is transcribed easily.
The locked-in shoot offers and additional mise-en-scène where the play of lights is used to depict that albeit each characters acting the same room, the differences in light allows us to remember that they are all quarantined in different places. It also offers a bit of a persona into each characters: Len’s lights are energetic, yellow, but not too bright. Stubborn and seemingly coming from a privileged pretense. While the lights surrounding Caloy as he enters the scene for the first time is a bit dull and blue-ish, suggesting a cohesive, practical character that Mr. Santos is able to portray. He is always supportive, practical and yet reliable towards Len’s strong personality, but then towards the end he is never in the same room as her, while she reaches out and ends up in the room yet he is somehow emotionally distant. It’s a carefully well-thought of concept, combining two characters from polar opposite ideas, it can remind you of how people interact online, strangers combating a disease through words and yet the only one winning here is Corona[virus].
Dito at Doon is a pandemic film through and through: the arguments held on the incompetence of the government’s handling of the quarantine; the ever-so remote mass testing; and of the individual lockdowns that aren’t working. Unlike the film Locked Down (2021) where neither Chiwitel Eijofor nor Anne Hathaway can save it’s uneasy gimmick, Here and There does not have gimmicks. When Len asks Caloy for some certainty, the two share the same look that we are all familiar with during this whole time. There is no such thing [as certainty in these times]. The anxiety here is more than the “will-they, won’t they” appeal of what they might share, but the effects of how our lives will forever change when we all get to survive this.
Beneath all the premise that Dito at Doon is a film about finding love in the time of COVID-19, it offers more. A truth that unlike other pandemic-riled films, it breathes and exudes anxiety the way we smell it each day these days, the way it hits close to home, and the way there is no other escape, no other solution than to confront things that are questionable. Here’s to hoping we keep each other close before we don’t get the closure we so desperately all deserve.
UPDATE: Dito at Doon is now streaming on Netflix. Visit Netflix.com
The film ends on an unsatisfactory note with an artificial open-ended finale. Finishing it off carelessly and not offering a tight enough closure to wrap up all the loose ends. You’re left with the impression that you wasted an hour and thirty-eight minutes on “wala,” as Len fittingly concludes in this dud.
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