The Achy Breaky Hearts tells the story of thirty-year-old jewelry store manager Chinggay (Jodi Sta. Maria), who is feeling the pressure of being single. She's stayed single for the last seven years, following her last breakup. And then, life suddenly presents her with two very viable options. There's Ryan (Ian Veneracion), a recently heartbroken customer at the jewelry shop, and her ex-boyfriend Frank (Richard Yap), who has just returned to the country, and claims to be a changed man. Chinggay entertains both men's attentions, and in so doing, courts the possibility of both love and heartbreak.
The movie goes to a very interesting place. While this might just seem like a movie about a woman having to choose between two viable romantic partners, it turns out to have a greater agenda. The film basically bucks genre convention by imagining possibilities beyond the original binary choice. What it is ultimately trying to say is admirable. How it says it, though, is another matter. The theme comes out a bit muddled as the film trudges through its romantic entanglements.
The way the film depicts its romances run contrary to the overall theme. It’s a little difficult to talk about without giving too much away. But this is a film that seems to try and really build to a point about the social pressure on women to be attached to a man, especially once she enters her thirties. The film smartly makes hay out of Chinggay constantly being asked when she’s going to get married, revealing the casual cruelty that women face from a throng of nameless strangers every day while pursuing their happiness.
But the film falters in execution. It rarely grants Chinggay the agency to learn the lessons on her own. She talks a big game, but she defaults to standard rom-com heroine in most of these scenes, her personhood seemingly constructed from her feelings about the men in her life. The conflict feels artificial, and Chinggay ultimate decision doesn’t really seem to come from her. It is the direct result of the actions of the men in her life, and that really muddies the waters here. The film does get to say its point in the end, but it doesn’t really feel like it earns it.
And stylistically, the film is kind of a mess as well. It makes sudden jumps in time that handicap the emotion. The product placement is pretty blatant and distracting. There’s clunky voiceover narration to explain feelings that should be evident in the scene. Occasionally the film does land on clever scenes that capture something real about how people deal with relationships, but they kind of get lost is the haze of everything. Jodi Sta. Maria is lovely in this role, the actress often filling in through performance what the screenplay at times fails to provide. Ian Veneracion and Richard Yap fill their roles well enough, but they really are mostly there to be attractive options.
The Achy Breaky Hearts can be admired for what it ends up saying. It’s a worthy sentiment that isn’t said enough in a genre that has gotten too comfortable about the messages it’s sending out. But I don’t think the film really pulls it off. There are too many bits of this story that just don’t work with what the film is ultimately trying to convey, and the stylistic lapses make it difficult to take the thing seriously. There is a seed of something interesting here, but the film is still too mired in the old paradigms to make it really work.
My Rating:
