One of the biggest problems with mainstream filmmaking is the insistence on following a certain form. Some stories are square pegs, and they don’t quite fit in the industry’s well-worn round holes. It is exactly what goes wrong with My Kontrabida Girl, a film that starts out as a mildly dark screwball comedy and ends as a predictably tedious romance. Like many other mainstream pictures, the struggle creates an identity crisis that ends up making the movie difficult to watch.
Isabel (Rhian Ramos) has built her on career on being the kontrabida, her bad behavior on and off the set making her a bankable star in soap operas. But after she has a near death experience, she finds herself unable to access the darkness that gives her characters such spark. She’s forced to go on a hiatus, and she’s encouraged to try and find her mojo. She takes advice from a series on Internet videos featuring Bella Flores. They tell her to go find a person that hurt her in the past, so that she can focus her hate properly. This leads her back to her hometown in Palawan, where her old friend Chris (Aljur Abrenica) still resides. A past humiliation fuels Isabel to try and ruin Chris’ life, but something else happens along the way.
What happens is perhaps one of the most strained romantic relationships in cinema. Besides the fact that the leads share very little chemistry, the plot just can’t justify their attraction and inevitable bliss. After an hour of the main character actively plotting to destroy someone’s life while everyone around her acts like cartoons, the film bends to accommodate the requisite “dramatic” moments that identify a Pinoy romantic picture. None of it works, the story simply unable to support any of those big emotions. The character’s actions just don’t make sense in this context.
The movie is also burdened with typical mainstream movie bloat. At two hours, the film is suffused with extraneous subplots that only serve to provide screen time to a bevy of minor studio stars. The additions take away from the main plot, and make the movie feel sloppy and disjointed. The edit seems helpless to tie all these stray threads together, and the final product is more than a little unwatchable. There are hints of inspiration in the movie – a sequence that has Isabel consulting with other legendary kontrabidas has a wonderfully absurd touch – but those moments are lost is the swirl of bloat and formula.
In the end, the movie just ends up slogging through the expected rhythms of the romantic movie. It’s all quite tedious and exhausting, the film seemingly struggling to find the enthusiasm to go on. The leads, with their mismatched chemistry, don’t provide the kind of energy that can sustain this sort of thing. The film does find a decent use for Aljur Abrenica, milking his earnestness for all its worth. He waffles at the more dramatic moments, but there’s charm in his simplicity. Rhian Ramos is all over the place in this role, and it might have benefitted the movie if she had just played things a little straighter.
My Kontrabida Girl might have for a great dark comedy, its absurd tendencies and screwy psychology prime ingredients for a twisted take on kontrabidas. The film even seems to start out that way, really digging into the problems of a person who becomes known for being terrible. But then the movie seems to get confused and just wanders into the constraints of romantic formula. And along the way, it loses all possible edge and ends up forcing all that weirdness into a thoroughly unoriginal shape. It pushes for emotions that simply aren’t there.
