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Vince & Kath & James
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Theodore Boborol
Screenwriters: Daisy Cayanan, Kim Noromor, Anjanette Haw
(From a story by Daisy Cayanan, Kim Noromor, Anjanette Haw, based on the book of the social series Vince & Kath by Jenny Ruth Almocera, writing as Queen Elly)
Producer: Star Cinema
Cast: Julia Barretto, Joshua Garcia, Ronnie Alonte, Maris Racal, Ina Raymundo, Shamaine Buencamino, Ana Abad Santos, Jeric Raval, Alan Paule, Manuel Chua, Joshua Zamora, Axel Torres, Milo Elmido Jr., AJ Urquia, Sarah Carlos, Pontri, Gerry Bricenio, Kim Andaya, Kelley Day, Jessica Marasigan, Jose Sarasola, Rafa Esplana, Paul Pujante, Uajo Manarang, Pamela Gonzales, Pauline Palomique, Jan Urbano, Hessa Isabelle Gonzales, Curse and Bless, Mark Joshua Edrosa
Social-work major Carson practices for her graduation, but her film-major crush Dio picks her up along with her gay best friend Jason Ty to watch him perform at an indie-music bar. Afterward Dio invites the two to take a road trip to La Union province, several hours’ drive away from Manila. He treats them to hotel rooms at a beach resort, promising to get them back in time for graduation. The prospect of ending their university-student lives intensifies Carson’s infatuation for Dio, with Jason constantly reining her in so as not to make a fool of herself. Then they discover that Dio brought them along because he wanted to hook up again with Pathy, a girlfriend he had before his college years, and he needed his confidants to tell him whether or not he was on the wrong track.
A loose adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, Vince & Kath & James not only updates the 17th-century setting to the present millennium but also relocates the drama from Paris to Metro Manila. The romantic and comic elements function satisfactorily, although V&K&J has to proceed necessarily wordily, with Vince, the Cyrano equivalent, articulating his sublimated passion using James’s alias as well as an anonymous viral account of someone who expresses himself, haiku-like, in exactly six words every time. Kath, who falls for both of Vince’s ruses, maintains some propriety by having a giggly best friend, Maxine, who comments on everyone’s motivation but most of all on Kath’s emotional development. Kath’s own realization, drawn from her mother’s domestic struggle, that she must learn to look beyond surface attractiveness in men, leads predictably enough to her reassessing James’s maturity and his overreliance on Vince, with her resentment that Vince agreed to masquerade online as James constituting the final obstacle to their happy ending. In fact a more reliable anchor for an appreciation of the narrative is the film’s roots in the briefly popular social-series phenomenon, where it was originally titled Vince & Kath and utilized another updated format, the epistolary narrative, with the story unfolding via screenshots of fictional messages from SMS and chat exchanges between the characters; the series proved popular enough to be spun off into a 24-chapter book version (another now-less-popular format) early the same year that the expanded film version came out. The intertextual references have since extended beyond the film’s originary material. Vince and Kath bond over a shared enthusiasm for Olivia M. Lamasan’s Got 2 Believe (2002), which starred the real-life aunt of the V&K&J leading lady but became a record blockbuster because of the death of its male lead, allegedly due to depression caused by his breakup with his costar. The Vince and Kath character players would figure out in their own subsequently messy breakup, while the Maxine performer would first be featured in the social-media scandal of the year before recuperating her belated status as extremely capable performer and sensible netizen. These reflexive elements can no longer be regarded as independent of the media product they attend, and it would be specious to insist they don’t impinge on one’s awareness to those with access to such information, much as stars’ personas will always be crucial to the appreciation of their showcase features and just as the actual Cyrano de Bergerac’s biography inevitably haunts the staging of the play (and their adaptations) about him.
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