Lust is deadly, or so it has been said. What if the heartbreak from it is the source of resurrection? Netflix and Viva Film's "Alter Me" re-modes the consequences of sinful, immoderate covetousness and makes it the Eucharist of self-endearment from being brokenhearted. Unaltered is the flick's premise (by screenwriter Danno Kristoper C. Mariquit): college mates Uno (Enchong Dee) and Aimee (Jasmine Curtis-Smith) reconnect thru Alter, a Tinder-Twitter-based dating app. The plot is the tried-and-tested romance shenanigans, until love is deemed the alteration tool for perception and emotive discovery. Uno is a head-over-heels romantic while Aimee is the job-doused mushy pessimist. Contrasts yet compatible somehow — that is the rule of dating maybe, online or whatnot.
A neon-galore, the undertones in "Alter Me" are the brightness of social media reimagined for cinema (it might have gone to theaters besides Netflix sans 2020's CoViD-19 plague) — the postmodern techno visualty is part cyberpunk, part drunk eyeview. Because "Alter Me" is a romantic comedy, it has raunchy twinklings and an overdose of undershown sex. The foreplay is the mouth-fondling between Uno and Aimee; the main event is the titillatingly climactic soundscape by scorers Robbie Factoran, Arnold Buena, Peter Legaste, and BP Valenzuela. The lattermost's electro-beats are previously heard in Prime Cruz's metropolis soul-bender "Sleepless" (2015). "Alter Me" is composed with music so scalding and eargasmic, the torrential riff and electric zings finger the fleshy calls, heightening the pleasurable maneuvers of Uno's lips in Aimee's. The sound design musically narrates the sexual appetite as carnal movements synthesize with the disco pulse along tap-buzz copulation.
With the Guadalupe skyline as backdrop, Gardo's Butingtingan is the street-weary parallel: electric fans, TV, radio, and other junk for repair are sleeping robots against the ever awake and hyacinth-cruising Pasig River. Uno and Aimee share a tender shot in the spot, cinematically scaled by director RC Delos Reyes. Contemplating their heartaches, the two converse by the concrete stairs just above the waterbed, the camera slightly panned to level the MRT Guadalupe bridge, with zooming cars like fireflies underneath the Metro's evening. The frame is an iconic resemblance of Woody Allen's "Manhattan" — the imagery of him and Diane Keaton on a bench below Manhattan Bridge.
At Gardo's Butingtingan too is where Uno's spare parts — the loose springs and rusty screws of his love-worn heart — burst over the Pasig River, finally signaling he is in need of repair. Dee yowls as if a man condemned for a crime he is innocent of and a wailing baby bewildered by the over-torment he has undergone whilst relatively young. Also introduced in "Alter Me" is Curtis-Smith decidedly mature as she channels Ruby (Aimee's second name and work-strict persona). She quickly shifts her gear into playful Aimee, big pupils like white chocolate and all, grinning as if with a plan to run amuck at the playground.
"Alter Me," being a romance movie, is not such without the intruding ex in the laughable version of JC Santos as Ernest, Aimee's former fling. A douche at one point, he retrieves his classiness much like how Billy Crawford became heroic in "A Second Chance" (Cathy Garcia Molina, 2015). But Santos is not heroic in "Alter Me," rather a redeeming unit for Uno and Aimee's arc. It could be that he is the altering factor between the two, for better or for best. Santos has lost some of his luster since his pleasant stint in "Sakaling Hindi Makarating" (Ice Idanan, 2016). The actor may have preserved and flourished said dazzle if he tackled the indies more before the inevitable grip of mainstream overexposure: the Coco Martin treatment. Santos overexposed yet engrossing, Dee at his very exigent, and Curtis-Smith controlling her alter-egos are the aspects altered within them, rhetorically depicted in "Alter Me." That ending frame of Uno in smart ensemble amongst crossing pedestrians is a diagram of the shaping trait of love — people walk in and out of lane —, it goes on with or without.
Director: RC Delos Reyes
Image and Trailer ©️ Netflix, Viva Films; YouTube.com
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