A whacky gender mix-up

Film review: Woke Up Like This

MANILA, Philippines - Why do I go to the movies?

When I was younger, I go to the movies to know the actors and discover new places and connect with their way of life, how they think and how they cope.

Good movies enable me to reflect on my life and wonder of wonders, some movies tend to look like happy and sad chapters of my existence.

It doesn’t mean I am always looking for the lofty and the profound in the movies.

Sometimes, I go to the movies just to have a good laugh and reflect on how life can have comic turns.

Monday night watching Joel Ferrer’s Woke Up Like This, I ended up guffawing in some endless episodes of gender mix-up and how the protagonists managed after discovering their disconcerting fate.

Lovi Poe virtually delivered a good spoof of a fashion show as she portrayed a man trapped in a woman’s body and Vhong Navarro as fashion model trapped in a man’s body.

I am not sure if laughter can cure my hypertension but in that moment when I wanted to escape from life for a few hours, laughter came handy as an inexpensive medication.

With script by Joma Labayen and Jeps Gallon, Woke Up Like This entertains with good character contrasts provided by the characters of Vhong and Lovi.

Once again, you see the great class divide as the film opens with how comfortable families live and how habitués from the “laylayan ng lipunan” look like.

Lovi is enjoying a proper breakfast while Vhong is trying to make do with what passes for a humble meal shared by many members of the family.

As their work-a-day world unfolds, they encounter a mysterious old man (Lou Veloso) whom they treat as nothing but nuisance.

That is where their respective agonies begin.

Playing the role of a fashion model, Lovi turns into a sultry figure trapped in a man’s body while Vhong the aspiring basketball player turns into a woman.

Their misadventures while they cope with their new genders are the film’s source of unlimited laughter.

Vhong is a versatile actor and his brand of comedy relives the era of the Manila Grand Opera House and Clover Theater.

Lovi managed to portray Vhong’s manly attributes with relish and she provides another round of comedic mayhem in the movie.

But after having your generous share of laughter, you begin to wonder where all this would end up.

I like enjoying a dose of laughter in the movie house but I also like a good sense of relief. I like comedies to end with a subtle hint of drama and a generous sense of realization that laughter heals but it is not everything. Somewhere along the labyrinth of comic relief, writers should find a way to inject a sense of pathos, a sense of bewilderment and to realize that laughter is a good ingredient for entertainment.

But it is just a means, not the reason, for the film’s existence.

I like comic films that project the emptiness of one’s existence and at the same time echo the eternal theme that life isn’t always what you make it.

For this reason, I commend Lou’s portrayal as the mysterious Everyman. He provides the link in which the characters come to terms with themselves as human being.

Woke Up Like This, also starring Joey Marquez, Mitoy Yonting, Raikko Mateo, Coraleen Wadell, Yanna Asistio and Dionne Monsanto, is now showing in cinemas.