Batanes is lavishly produced, wonderfully shot, and more than competently acted. A few foibles in the script department threaten to make it all fall apart, but it manages to keep it together long enough to make it work.

Pam is a stressed-out city dweller who crosses paths with Rico. They fall in love. Rico brings her to his hometown of Batanes, where he shares with her his love for the sea. One day, Rico doesn’t come back from fishing. A year later, Pam is still mourning for Rico, and she’s developed resentment for the sea. That’s when Kao, a Taiwanese fisherman, suddenly enters her life.

It’s all a little hard to summarize, but basically, it’s about Pam’s relationship with the sea. The sea in this film is a living, breathing character, prone to anger yet unyieldingly generous when it wants to be. It’s an interesting conceit, and it mostly works, mainly because of some truly excellent filmmaking.

There is real skill behind the camera here. Batanes’ wild land and seascape make for some dramatic imagery, and this film doesn’t waste a frame. There are some truly gorgeous frames in this film, and they help create a personality for the island and the sea that surrounds it. It feels like a lot of thought was put into every shot, and as such, the camera moves with grace and purpose.

But it isn’t all good. The script is really clunky at times, especially when trying to establish changes in people. The entire beginning sequence serves to show us how Pam and Rico meet, but not how they fell in love, or how Pam came to decide to go to Batanes. That seems like a pretty important thing to establish, story-wise. Without it, the emotions just aren’t as strong as they could be. The reliance on voice-over really weakens it as well.

And then there are the subtitles. The film features Tagalog, some Mandarin, some Ivatan, and some English, and strangely, the entire film is subtitled in English. It’s a little jarring, and definitely a strange choice. One can understand the need for some subtitles, but it weakens the experience, and actually muddles one of the film’s major themes.

Still, those don’t take too much away from the filmmaking. On the acting side of things, it’s generally pretty good. Iza Calzado is fantastic from beginning to end. There is a physical aspect to her character development that is simply amazing to watch. Ken Zhu is okay, and mostly gets the point across. The supporting cast is really strong, and they really prop up the leads.

In the end, it’s really the filmmaking the holds up. There are weaknesses to this film, but it’s almost hard to notice them sometimes, when it offers up poignant little scenes coupled with powerful images. It’s almost enough to see that level of skill and care put into every frame.

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