Bride for Rent is about a rich kid who tries to fool his grandmother into giving him access to his trust fund by pretending to be married. It is also about a scheming grandmother who sets out to fix her grandson by trapping him inside a fake marriage. It sounds like the ingredients for a dark comedy, but Bride for Rent isn’t nearly that adventurous. While the elements are all farcical, the film still makes a play for stock sentiment.
On one terrible, drunken night, avowed bachelor Rocco (Xian Lim) gambles away an important client’s advance, and ends up owing a casino ten million pesos. He’s counting on his trust fund to pay the debt, but it turns that he only gets access to it if he’s married. Rocco and his friends hold auditions to get a girl to pretend to be his wife in order to fool his grandmother Lala (Pilita Corales) and get the money. He ends up hiring poor, would-be actress Rocky (Kim Chiu), and the two prepare for what ought to be a quick deception. But Lala sees through the ruse immediately, and later conspires with Rocky to teach Rocco a lesson.
The film kind of plays out as a gender-reversed version of The Taming of the Shrew, with Rocky and Lala basically using this ruse as a means of whipping Rocco into becoming an acceptable human being. It’s a pretty silly premise, and when the film plays it as a farce, it kind of works. But the film isn’t really brave enough to stay a farce. In the end, it still pursues sentiment, and that’s where the problems crop up. It’s hard to take the relationship and family drama seriously when it’s all founded on a rather ridiculous ruse.
It all feels badly miscalculated. The film later uses real couples talking about what makes their marriages work. While the stories are sweet, the intrusion of reality feels unwelcome in this movie. It feels pretty wrong that the film’s central relationship might be held up beside these real love stories; ones that aren’t founded on false pretenses. These natural couple interactions only serve to highlight just how poor this love story really is.
To the film’s credit, it all looks very good. Excellent production values make the film very easy on the eye. The bright color palette gives the film a jaunty feel. The acting is all right. This second pairing between Xian Lim and Kim Chiu yields a touch more chemistry. Chiu’s energy is pretty infectious, and her willingness to look silly is kind of endearing. Lim rarely offers up the same vulnerability, but he’s showing some development. The film also benefits from the presence of Pilita Corales. Her role doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but she’s a lot of fun to watch.
There’s a more interesting film somewhere inside Bride for Rent. Its opening minutes introduce us to a set of characters that aren’t exactly sympathetic. It would have been a thrill for the movie to simply embrace the strange psychosis that fuels its premise and offer up a story that isn’t about giving these terrible people a happy ending. But the film refuses to be interesting. It instead reverts to formula, offering up long looks and love songs and wedding proposals between two people who really don’t treat each other very well.
My Rating:
—
Image used in home stream taken from official ABS-CBN Film Productions Inc. (Star Cinema) Facebook page.
