The rich and restless

Film review: A Secret Affair

MANILA, Philippines - Viva Films’ A Secret Affair is well-measured for box-office success. A treatise on modern love, relationships, fidelity, lying (even if by omission), and the consequences thereof, it stars Anne Curtis, Derek Ramsay and Andi Eigenmann. The cast guarantees that we’ll be dealing with wonderful physical specimens on display — plying the life, scruples and morals of the rich and restless of contemporary Manila society.

Directed by Nuel Naval, care was taken to make the feel of this aspirational life feel right; girls’ night-out at Opus, with Tim Yap dropping by their table, Porsches, Benzes and Minis, visits to Pico de Loro, high-end malls, and Teatrino, luxury condominiums and sprawling residences.

Stylist Rafi (Anne) and chef Anton (Derek) are a young couple enjoying their two months of togetherness, when Anton pops the question of marriage. Breaking the news to her posse, Rafi is unaware that Sam (Andi) had a torrid, casual encounter with Anton before he had met Rafi. A spoiled rich kid, Sam asks Anton if he has told Rafi about the two of them, and naturally, he hasn’t.

When Rafi gets cold feet on the eve of their wedding, Anton is left distraught, and thinking Rafi’s gone forever, succumbs to Sam’s advances, rekindling what Anton believes is a relationship of convenience, while Sam ominously, gives it a deeper meaning. And that’s the set-up for a story ripe with questions of what friendship really means, the fine line between love and lust, and how infidelity and covering up always boomerangs on you. On this journey, we also get the insights of the older generation: Rafi’s mother, as played by Jaclyn Jose, and Sam’s parents, Jackielou Blanco and Johnny Revilla.

Slickly packaged, well-directed both for the visuals and the character development, what I don’t like about the film, are exactly what promises to make the film a runaway success. What are set up as dialogue is often an excuse for speeches and an opportunity for dropping the mouth-gaping closing line. I guess we owe that to how No Other Woman was so talked about, and lines memorized. I did like the humor, and how the film pokes fun at tweets, Facebook, and social networking. And I did approve of the bittersweet ending, how we didn’t surrender to the need to produce a feel good, happy resolution to the film. I didn’t understand why so much of the dialogue had to be delivered in English. Is this the cliché of if they’re society, they have to be Inglesera? And with all the attention to detail, I remembered what my chef friends would say while watching the film, that you can’t be a real chef if your uniform is spotless and spanking white — they should have dirtied up Derek’s chef attire.

So yes, there is some stereotyping made about the young rich set, but if the approving audience reaction of the screening I caught is any gauge, A Secret Affair won’t be a secret much longer, and we’ll all be mouthing the juicy lines of Jaclyn Jose as she defines “mistress” and “querida,” and  recall with glee how Anne slaps Andi with a cutting remark about the compact density of her face!  In a way, this is the glory drama days of Viva Films brought back to life, with a modern twist.