Watching Waves

Insecurities… everyone’s worst enemy. This is what I’ve seen from watching the romantic drama, Waves, during its private screening at Ayala Center Cebu in September of 2014. Starring Baron Geisler, Ilona Struzik and with the special participation of award-winning veteran actress, Ms. Pilar Pilapil, I was captivated by how the actors immortalized the characters they play in the story and how it was being told on film.

The Movie, the Director

It was amazing.

The concept of the movie has its purpose, double purpose. The story. The location.

The scenes were set here in Cebu, in the areas of Tayud, Consolacion, and Oslob. The rest of the story was captured in Palawan. I was fascinated on how they angled every scene. It was classical, yet full of modern elegance.

If you’re a native of Cebu, you would be proud that nowadays, competitive movies were filmed and produced to a place where we were born, grew up, and gone old. This is what Don Gerardo Frasco, the director/producer of Waves, is planning to do.

He is from Liloan, a municipality of the province of Cebu. Certainly, ‘Waves’ is totally home-grown.

If you could just imagine how it turned out well, you wouldn’t believe that the place you are in now is so beautiful you wanted to go back there, far away, and experience the exact location of the film.

The location served as another character.

That is why I was insecure in a good way, because Cebuano as I am, I now trust to the idea that I haven’t seen yet the whole beautiful of Cebu, and Don Gerardo Frasco successfully pictured the charm and the wonders of what I call home.

When I watched the movie during the private premiere, this one word kept lingering in my mind, and that one word is “Home.”

The Characters

Like the lead actress, Sofia (Ilona Struzik), I felt her being carefree and fun-loving. She has her own insecurities, too. We can relate to her, in the sense that there are some points in our lives we fear commitment.

Our hearts can take the risk, but the mind overshadowed the feeling and the “what ifs” would start sinking in.

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

Baron Geisler’s character, Ross, interpreted well the timeline of our lives that sometimes it can be better, or other times, the worst. Rock bottom worst.

There are some things that we couldn’t tell others. Life is full of secrets that we even wouldn’t dare tell ourselves that things are how things are, and still, we pretend everything is doing fine, everything is alright. Everything is going from what and how we planned it.

Sometimes, we all get lost and we forget who we are somewhere along our own way.

Struggles are real. This movie is so real I was amazed to know these life facts. If there would’ve been a chance to say THANK YOU and give a very big hug to Don Gerardo Frasco, in person, I will definitely do it.

The movie is straightforward. Kudos.