By PABLO A. TARIMAN
LOVE teams in Philippine movies mean a lot to producers and audiences.
For the producers, a good love team can translate into box office hits.
A successful pair can translate into more following and for the stars, it means more commercial endorsements.
According to movie chronicler Mario Bautista, love teams in Philippine cinema made quite an impact from the 1920s to the 1930s with the love team of Mary Walter and Gregorio Fernandez (Rudy Fernandez’s grandfather).
In the 1930s and the 1940s, the love team of Rosa del Rosario and Leopoldo Salcedo was the toast of tinsel town followed by Elsa Oria and Ely Ramos, Lucita Goyena and Fernando Poe, Sr.
From the 1940s to the 1950s, the love teams to beat were Corazon Noble and Angel Esmeralda, Carmen Rosales and Rogelio de la Rosa, Tita Duran and Pancho Magalona and on to the decades of Delia Razon and Mario Montenegro, Nida Blanca and Nestor de Villa, Gloria Romero and Luis Gonzales and on to the 60s most-most loved pairs of Amalia Fuentes and Romeo Vasquez and on to Susan Roces and Eddie Gutierrez.
The love teams of the new millennium are dime a dozen and as always, the partners change faces and they still do good at the box office.
The new love team to reckon with is Sarah Geronimo and Coco Martin who will appear in a new film called “Maybe This Time” opening on May 28.
In a presscon announcing her latest starrer, Sarah tells media men the first order of the day before shooting starts is to get to know her leading man.
Here, she describes her close collaboration with co-actors, notably with her leading man.
The singing actress says a good and credible love team doesn’t just happen overnight. “Since this is our first team up as a love team, my first work was to find ways to connect with my co-actor. Coco and I earlier worked together in none-movie projects and we have to build anew based on that first meeting. Now I have to relate to him as a co-actor but the most challenging part is to relate as close as possible to his character as Toni in another time and in another setting. This means you have to get to know your leading man inside and out and more importantly, get to know the character he is portraying.”
Coco is surprised at the work ethic of his leading lady and how she made it all easy for him. “Since this is our first time as a love team, I needed to get to know her quickly and know at once what she expects from her screen sweetheart. Sarah was a revelation. She is constantly concerned with the chemistry that will work and what will make the love team credible. She actually helped me relax and as a result, my acting on the set was real and spontaneous. In between the ‘harutan’ and the’landian’ on the set, I was stunned to see a new kind of aggressiveness in her.”
Coco is probably referring to a scene where Sarah gangs up on him and looking like a cool femme fatal determined to seduce him. But after pinning him down and running her hands on his face, she drops her line, “You badly need a facial.”
Even director Jerry Sineneng noticed the unusual rapport between the two who are always looking for something new and exciting to show their fans.
Sarah has moved on from acting for her screaming fans and is ready to show them her new persona as an actor. At this phase of her singing and acting career, Sarah Geronimo is aching for something real and ennobling about her chosen craft.
She admits to doing early “kilig” films that thrilled her fans and left her looking for something closer to her art and soul. The screaming of her fans she interprets as a sign of acceptance. But there is a little space in heart that tells her she can still do better.
When you are young and gullible, she intimated earlier, you tend to imitate some singers, their famous stage acts and opt for something easily digestible.
But late last year, she expressed her desire to find her inner voice, something true to herself and something she can hold on to with pride.
She has learned to rewind her own private life and freeze something helpful to her character. She likes it that her co-actor comes from a simple family with simple dreams. “What I learned from my own life and seeing other people find a way out from their romances that didn’t work, all these I used to define the character I am portraying in this film.”
Like it or not, Sarah’s art and life merge in her new film.
Her fans screamed when she said,“Yes, sir, 95 per cent of my real life is in this film. What I went through with my first love found reflection in this film. But this film is not about me. It is about my character Steph Asuncion who fell in love with Tonio Bugayong (Coco).”
Indeed, talk of life imitating art.
