With Rewind being the highest-grossing Filipino film of all time now, what does that say about the Filipino audience? First, we are still hooked on loveteams and romantic films. Second, Star Cinema has a firm grasp of the audience’s emotional needs in watching films. Third, Filipinos will spend their hard-earned money to buy expensive tickets for a formulaic, predictable romantic family drama that affirms their conservative, Catholic-influenced values about relationships and family.
Mae Cruz-Alvar’s surprise mega box office hit of 2023 stars reel-to-real-life love team Dingdong Dantes and Marianne Rivera as a married couple in a crumbling family. John (Dantes) is your typical teleserye Filipino dad: A workaholic, egoistic a-hole in a corporation who neglects his loving family. After his full-time, ever-caring housewife Mary (Rivera) died in a car accident, John was expectedly remorseful, wishing he could have done things right when she was still alive.
In the true spirit of a familiar Filipino story, Catholicism is presented as the bringer of solutions and lessons. Jesus appeared in the form of Lodz (Pepe Herrera), a comedic yet wise deity who offered a deal with John: He would rewind the time, give him a chance to be a good father figure in their household, and save Mary from the accident. But a life must be exchanged for another life. The love and mercy of Lodz is, apparently, conditional. Screenwriters Enrico Santos and Joel Mercado inserted a funny jab at our politicians when John said Lodz should take the life of an unnamed-yet-obvious corrupt leader. But trust Lodz, he has bigger plans for them. John volunteered himself as the sacrificial lamb. Rewind is not just a family drama film, it’s a Holy Week classic in the making.
John went back in time and corrected his mistake: He did not throw a hissy fit when he was not promoted, he avoided the temptation of his seductive new boss Vivian (Sue Ramirez, dressed in a sultry red gown, just in case you don’t know she’s a slut-coded character), and he went immediately back to his home to have a spontaneous date with Mary at late night. Cue Ben&Ben’s hit ballad Sa Susunod Na Habang Buhay to emphasize the film’s theme of second chances and to command the audience to root for John and feel the rekindled kilig of this dying marriage.
Command. The film commands and commands what the audience should feel in every scene. You should pity the couple’s son Austin (Jordan Lim) when his father is subtly not supporting his igniting passion for music. You should laugh at the slapstick antics of John’s work side-kick Lucas (Joross Gamboa). Your eyebrows should furrow when John kisses Vivian. You should empathize with Mary when she finds out about his husband’s affair. You should cry when John sobs while delivering his eulogy for his late wife. Rewind dictates our emotional response until the credits roll.
It’s understandable why thousands of audiences recorded themselves on TikTok and showed their puffy eyes after watching Rewind. Cruz-Alvar mastered Star Cinema’s effective drama formula. Father neglecting his familial duties, check. Work affair, check. God is the solution to everything, a huge check. The protagonist will realize the importance of family in the end, check. Don’t forget a ballad with its instrumentals utilized as the score. Rewind is a testament to how Filipino audiences will subscribe to Western-style films with Judeo-Christian-influenced values as the main message.
Dantes and Rivera, more known as the DongYan love team, equipped with their undeniable chemistry, are schooling everyone why love teams are special and unique in Filipino cinema history. Generating chemistry onscreen is not automatically easy for real-life couples (see Carlo Aquino and Charli Dizon in Third World Romance) but the couple’s banters, fights, and expressions of love for each other are perfectly mixed with the film’s emotional tasks. DongYan is making everyone envious of their sweet moments at the park, in their living room, and in the kitchen.
The film, however, is offensively safe in portraying familial and marital conflicts. Rewind relied on the Filipino audience’s familiarity and comfort with the genre’s conventions and cliches. “It’s a Filipino film, after all,” my friends argued when I ranted about the film. That’s true, and not only that, it’s a film screened at the Metro Manila Film Festival, an annual holiday film festival swarmed by traditional, conservative families who are looking for films that can teach them valuable lessons during Christmastime.
It was unfortunate for Rewind to limit the audience’s reception, treating them like they would reject any changes in the Star Cinema drama formula. The film dictates emotions with its surplus of melodrama instead of leading the audience to process their emotions as a response to a certain scene. Would it be a sin if there were a scene of silence instead of a bawl? Wouldn’t it be more powerful if John cried alone at his office with no score instead of berating his boss in the bathroom for not promoting him? Cruz-Alvar could have been bolder in challenging the audience’s reception of sadness and regret in Rewind while retaining the film’s message about chances and ever-lasting love.
Rewind is now streaming on Netflix.
