Sana Dati

Last friday, I was supposed to have dinner with friends from college but someone tested positive for Dengue so dinner got cancelled. Last minute (yeah right like I don't often do it) I checked clickthecity.com to see what movies are on, fortunately I saw that Sana Dati was showing in Greenbelt so I decided to watch it. Sana Dati is part of the last Cinemalaya festival, as much as I wanted to I failed to see any of the movies that participated which was such a shame since the entries this year were very good. Buti na lang Sana Dati got released commercially, I have read good reviews about the movie but went to it without much expectations. (I managed to catch "Instant Mommy" pala, it was good but I felt underwhelmed)

The movie revolves around a wedding and the hours leading up to it, flashbacks were used to depict how the main conflict came about. The lead seems unsure of she's gonna go through with the wedding. 

So here's what I thought of the movie, it was fresh! As far as Pinoy film making goes this was a definite step forward. It's different from mainstream movies it has that fresh feel to it. Acting wise the actors were great, in my opinion everyone stepped up their game for this movie. I had a bias against Lovi Poe who plays the lead actress, I didn't like her and I went into it determined to hate her but in the process she won me over. Benjamin Alves has this classic leading man features, TJ Trinidad was so good in this movie and Paolo Avelino as well plays these characters real well. The film won a slew of awards including acting awards for TJ Trinidad and best direction for Jerrold Tarog. But more than the acting what struck me the most was the cinematography, busog na busog yung mga mata ko with the images it delivered. The director is a master of those poignant moments where the actors didn't have to do anything, the camera did the work. Scenes were so beautiful I don't know how they managed to do it given that the setting was just some small and unknown hotel in the city.

The film also won an award for Best Original Music Score which was something that I also appreciated, lalo na the end scene. In my FB post after watching the movie I said that there are times when movie scenes meet the perfect song, the end scene of Sana Dati by Jerrold Tarog met "Indak" by Up Dharma Down and it was a thousand levels of awesomeness. As soon as the first beat played I already recognized the song and I instantaneously started cursing in Tagalog. The combination of the scene and the song hit me straight in the gut, I was already familiar with the song prior to the movie actually it is one of my favorites from their Capacities album so I knew how the scene together with the song will go down. The song choice was genius!