On the first week of the new year, I watched two Filipino films on Netflix back-to-back! Here are some of my thoughts about A Very Good Girl and Monday First Screening. There will be spoilers ahead—read at your own risk!
A Very Good Girl (2023)
directed by Petersen Vargas
starring Kathryn Bernardo + Dolly de Leon
I always love me a good revenge drama. I mean, who doesn’t like seeing the meanies getting served a full dose of their own medicine, right? So when I learned A Very Good Girl was one such movie, I decided to give it a try.
Sadly, I was completely disappointed.
Perhaps I came in expecting too much. Yes, even after seeing some mixed reviews on X. After all, there was so much hype around this movie when it came out in the cinemas (the film grossed P100 million during its run), and even more so when it was announced that it will be streaming on Netflix. But even with two competent actresses involved, the movie failed to deliver.
In my opinion, the problem is rooted in the revenge plot itself. When I watch anything in the revenge genre, I always relish for the moment the main character exacts their revenge. And this becomes so much more satisfying if the lead up to it is done well. Bonus points if the villain gets to turn the tables around and feels like they’ve outsmarted the main character, only to find out that the MC has a final ace up their sleeve. Boom. It’s formulaic, I know, but you can’t tell me it’s not satisfying. In the end, what we want is for the MC to succeed, and if the story can’t give us that, what was the journey for?
In A Very Good Girl, Mercy (Kathryn Bernardo) hatches an elaborate plan to take down her former employer—the rich and powerful Molly (Dolly de Leon), owner of a chain of malls in the Philippines—after she gets unfairly terminated from her job (followed by a series of unfortunate events that ultimately results to her own mother’s demise). She works tirelessly and earns enough money to cover herself in glamorous designer clothes and puts on a new persona, Philo. As Philo, she targets all of Molly’s close friends and associates, essentially removing them from Molly’s life and inserting herself in the picture so she could become Molly’s “best girl.” All this while she digs up enough dirt about Molly that she could use to destroy her magnanimous, motherly public image.
On paper, this all sounds great, but the clunky script and haphazard execution was where it fell flat. Some scenes seemed to have been shot with the intent of making them the next viral meme. And that wasn’t entirely bad. I love camp and humor as much as the next person, but at some point in the film, you find yourself wondering if you’re watching a campy revenge drama, or a dramatic thriller. It becomes so serious that the tonal change becomes jarring. And the plot twists toward the end were so ridiculous I couldn’t help but laugh—I’m not entirely sure that was the reaction they were going for.
Where to find: Netflix
Runtime: 1h 57min
Trigger warnings: parental death, workplace discrimination, sexual assault, violence, murder
Overall rating
Monday First 
Screening (2023)
directed by Benedict Mique
starring Gina Alajar and Ricky Davao
The first time I saw the premise for this film, I thought “I hope it’s a romance!” and I am very happy to report that it is, in fact, a romance.
Here in the Philippines, some cities offer the perk of a free movie screening to senior citizens every Monday morning, and that’s where the main characters of Monday First Screening first meet. Lydia (Gina Alajar), a retired college professor, wanders at the mall one Monday, looking for something to do and happens to meet a group of senior citizens lining up at the cinema. The friendly bunch invite her to join them, and she ends up being seated beside Bobby, who we’d later learn, is a widower. Lydia gets into the movie fairly quickly and starts eating popcorn off Bobby’s bucket. When she starts choking on the snack, Bobby even offers her his drink, which is how she realizes the embarrassing situation. Call me a kilig junkie, but that entire sequence was pretty cute and got me kicking my feet in the air.
The entire will they, won’t they dance was pretty standard rom-com beats, but with the perspective of middle aged characters who are kind of anxious about trying to be in a relationship again. There was even another, younger suitor that posed a bit of a challenge to Bobby, but I was happy they resolved that arc quickly after providing a few cute “hee-hees.” I liked the overall lightness of the film, even if there were characters along the way who shared their struggles and provided a (thin) layer of drama to the story.
As a romance enjoyer, I appreciated this movie very much, especially since we don’t get a lot of straight up rom-coms (or roms, for that matter) in Philippine cinema anymore. In recent years, we’ve had an influx of movies that are marketed as romances but actually end in tragedy, or with the main character “choosing herself.” #NotARomance. Monday First Screening, though, gave us a glimpse of what romance is like between two elderly people who already have baggage from their previous relationships as well as personal struggles with grief and acceptance, but still choose to be happy with the person they want to spend the rest of their lives with. To some, it might be nothing groundbreaking, but to a romance-starved Filipino film viewer like me, it’s EVERYTHING.
Where to find: Netflix
Runtime: 1h 44min
Trigger warnings: minor character deaths, cancer (backstory), infidelity (backstory)
Overall rating
