By Carmen Aquino Sarmiento

MOVIE REVIEW
LSS (Last Song Syndrome)
Directed by Jade Castro

IN THESE troubled times, there’s something sweetly subversive about serving up a film with a happy ending that could believably happen. LSS daringly does just that. True, life isn’t always easy for its protagonists: the aspiring singer/song writer Sarah (Gabbi Garcia) and Zack (Khalil Ramos), the wholesome boy-next-door. Among the film’s highlights is his good-natured sparring with his larger than life, blue-haired and tattooed mother Ruby (Tuesday Vargas) as they routinely but affectionately curse each other out.

After a charmed first meeting on a P2P bus, we follow the pair’s initially divergent paths. Ms. Garcia is especially moving as the self-sacrificing big sister to Cedie (Elijah Canlas). She works at a series of minimum wage menial jobs and sells herbal supplements on the side, to send him to college. When she gets fired, she swallows her pride and even becomes a busker. Then, she learns that Cedie has dropped out and used her hard-earned money to record his own rap songs. Her hurt is palpable but she forgives him. She understands what it is to have dreams, even if hers must be on hold. It’s so refreshing to see decent people behaving with genuine love and concern for one another on-screen for a change, even if family dysfunction and neurosis are supposed to be the stuff of “serious” art. Sometimes, just entertainment is fine.

The pair’s paths briefly and tangentially cross months later at a coffee shop. Zack is there to meet his half-sister Cindy (Ameera Johara). Sarah mistakenly thinks they’re romantically involved, so she keeps her distance. The entire Ben&Ben, a popular indie folk/pop band whose songs are a veritable soundtrack to our protagonists’ lives, is at this coffee shop too. Their lead vocalists, the cousins Paulo and Miguel Guico, look like benignly dorky followers of Macario Sakay, the last Filipino general to hold out against the invading American imperial forces. (Fun fact: Sakay planned to kidnap President Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite daughter Alice who was supposed to visit Baguio. As ransom, our country would be granted independence in exchange for her release.)

In a playful riff on the ritual introduction of band members after a gig, the coffee shop barista loudly announces the names of each of the Ben&Ben band members as their orders are readied. Hey, they are among this film’s producers after all, so they’re entitled. Sarah bravely approaches the band as they are leaving, and asks if she can work for them as a humble roadie. She is gently rejected. Months later, she does get a job with their manager as a production assistant, really a gofer. Among her duties is handing cold drinking water to the other bands under the same management outfit, including Deux Ex Machina, her now successful younger brother’s band. But there is neither bitterness nor shame for either sibling. LSS has a paucity of true villainy. The closest to being bad guys are the narcissistic Cha (Iana Bernardez) and Sarah’s ex, Elmer (Eian Rances), who had insensitively scoffed at her artistic aspirations. He believed her future was in direct selling. Spoiler alert: he later inspires her first hit song.

Meanwhile, long-suffering Zack sees his best friend-without-benefits Cha, through a series of sexually fluid romantic entanglements since their college days yet. He’s just the sort of nice guy who doesn’t deserve to finish last, and one can’t help rooting for him. The director patiently shows us Zack’s and Sarah’s humanity, so that when both get their hearts broken, we truly do feel for them and weep with them too.

Their story unfolds over three years. It quietly teaches lessons in perseverance and kindness. Despite the initial rejection, Ben&Ben do give Sarah a break. They are unselfish as artists — no divas or angry angsty geniuses here. There’s no crab mentality either. Indie film fans will get a kick out of spotting other filmmakers in cameos, such as: Kip Oebanda as the P2P conductor; Keith Sicat as Ruby’s date; Quark Henares as Sarah’s boss who pleads with her not to unfriend him, even as he fires her.

Even Ruby comes around and forgives Zack’s father Buboy (Bernard Palanca) for abandoning them. It was she who had urged him to go work in the US when Zack was still a baby, which was how he ended up falling in love with Cindy’s mother. Long distance relationships is not for ordinary mortals. Love the one you’re with, as the song says.

Thus, when Zack as a good son accompanies his cancer-stricken father to the States for his treatment, Sarah and he disengage as lovers and become friends again. Their coming together at the end, in the magical setting of a music festival where Sarah is a star draw is just that much more satisfying. It’s not an ending but hopefully, a bright new beginning.

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