GK:MOVIE — What If (2023)

On today's GK review the Netflix original movie, What If (2023) by director Manny Palo. An added fun fact I just discovered upon looking at the film's IMDb page: the main female lead of this film, Alessandra De Rossi, also was its co-writer.

When a pair of newlywed musicians get trapped in a storm on their island honeymoon, they must face difficult truths that could tear their marriage apart.

More than anything, the thing I disliked the most about the film are the inconsistencies in (visual) storytelling and symbolisms. They exist at some points but then they lose it in some places. They fumble the bag a couple of times throughout the film, the most glaring one being the first thing we knew about Billie's character, which was the she liked counting seconds (or apparently, she's very good at Math), but we only had two scenes of this being talked about, and we never see her do this thing again. Is it really her character, or just a bit to make the narration interesting? Either way, it fell flat.

The story itself is pretty frustrating. Maybe this was intentional, but it wasn't a good experience. Everything was sad but entirely avoidable. I feel like it's a plot for plot's sake. I don't know if this is just my preference, but when the title itself is "what if" and nobody answered that question, or we didn't come to a conclusion by the end, and we just wrapped everything up with a "but they still love each other" or something like that, maybe the point isn't just about showing different faces of adversity in a relationship, maybe this has just turned into a think piece. I get that sometimes this (the plot of the film) is realistic, but the most important symbolism of asking the what if's and not answering them is a bit...confusing, to say the least. Or if I just missed it, again, the inconsistencies didn't help.

Now is it unwatchable though? To be fair, it's still watchable albeit a little uninteresting. The cuts and transitions are jarring. Also, lots of singing (is this just a giant, bloated music video?). The sceneries in this film and its photography are good though. Camarines Sur is beautiful, I appreciate how I got to travel there vicariously through the film.