IT must be written: the film with the smart-alecky title, That Thing Called Tadhana, has grossed millions at the box office. In last year’s Cinema One Originals film festival where it participated, it was lost in the entries that were edgier and had newer approaches to realities.
Reality and realities—these are the things that are greatly challenged and put to task by this film by Antoinette Jadaone. Where the plot claims that fate, or tadhana, can take over one’s personal case history, we expect unpredictability. Tadhana, that word so heavy with judgment from the unseen but nevertheless overpowering forces of the universe, becomes a cute mascot in this love enterprise of a film.
The story begins with a lovely, kind of spaced-out young woman, distressed at the airport. She is the kind of a person fellow travelers avoids. She is, in fact, a creature at airports that should alert terminal authorities. But the film paints her as loveable. She is embraceable you, no less. And one cute but nevertheless dumb and dumb-looking young man comes to her assistance. The irritating and irritant woman soon finds herself in the company of this young man. Or shouldn’t it be the other way around?
The woman is heartbroken, the audience finds out soon enough. She has saved up her hard-earned money, which could have only been a hefty sum. A trip to Europe can only be afforded by those who have enough surplus, have no family to support, no sibling to help out. In other words, a rare case in this poverty-stricken country of ours.
But this woman travels all the way to Italy only to find out that her inamorata is now enamoured with somebody else. Well, that is fate but only if you do not listen to your financial adviser. But the woman is someone out of the box. What remains of that rational—if she ever had a sliver of the rational—is this lump of a hysteria. And yet our young man is pleasantly stricken with love and brings her up north and there almost offers his heart but the screen does not allow. Fate has something else in store for this pair.
Angelica Panganiban has made a cottage industry of this role. She is natural as emotional breakdown personified, but only if you take this condition and milk it for all the cheese it holds. In the end, one wonders where the audacity of this woman comes from. She hies off to the mountains and stays with a man she barely knows. When mothers in the audience glow at the prospect of romance from this brazen adventure, I wonder also if they really care about their daughters riding a bus to nowhere with a man whose personal background can never be checked and traced.
JM de Guzman has mastered the lost-puppy look, the eyes droopy and helpless. One glance at this young man and we only have two choices: Pick him up and take care of him, or bring him to the city pound. Or, one can call the police and demand to know why he is so into the emotionally battered woman.
Once more a film is telling us how to fall in love, or how not to fall in love. The template for love cannot be found in shrines where prospective lovers pray for guidance but in cinemas. Here is a film that simplifies realities for us. The world’s worries are gathered in a rainbow that greets us when we wake up in the morning or when we sleep off the day’s worries. Fate has us eating off its grand hand. And we lose our critical faculty.
Who needs criticism when the candies and cakes are frothily bandied as available for everyone. Look again, for in That Thing Called Tadhana has its heart not on its sleeves but hidden because that is where true love can be found. A Facebook account possesses wisdom after all when it offers the option of calling one’s situation as “it’s complicated.” Fate for all its apparently randomizing function goes for the complex.
In the 1960s films like That Thing Called Tadhana were called “escapist.” Those films fooled audiences into thinking the elements of life can be simplistically arrayed. Then perhaps, this is where the film generated its huge box-office numbers. One escapes into a world where women and men can just be together in a day and night and not be scarred by it. The film does not have time for wounds or even minor scars. It tries to foist a body that has undergone major operations but what we find at the end of the narrative is the false assurances of a lover one encounters at bad terminals.
The culprit for the charm of this film is the aberrant dichotomy of a woman who has the strength to chart her own destiny because at the other end is a man who turns out to be not strong enough, and a woman who remains disposed to have a man beside her so there could be meaning to that apparently dull life of hers. Women—and men enlightened—have been fighting to discard these stereotypes but there are always huge movies with extra-cinematic prowess that overpower the masses. These movies are helped in a big way by premieres where fans rush out to announce that they have just come out refreshed from a wellspring of knowledge and inspiration. Women and even men bravely announce how they are able to relate to the characters.
The truth is that the film has seduced them into believing the plot because the characters are so unreal. We do not have a stake in their destiny and the hell we care about what fate brings them to. They are so lovely and innocent and reckless. They are not human beings.
Jadaone directs That Thing Called Tadhana where characters banter and swap witticisms as light as their persona. The woman dominates with her command of repartee that could only come from stand-up comedians rather than from living conversations, which is made richer not by words but by necessary silence.