Born Beautiful

Born Beautiful is Cignal Entertainment's first offering for the year and if there's no saying yet that 'If you can't start you year right, at least start it beautiful' then there should be one and you can start your year beautifully with this movie.

The sequel to the wildly successful 'Die Beautiful' was originally to be a 12-part TV series to be aired on Cignal's platform but instead was made into a full-length film which follows Trisha's sidekick Barbs (filled in nicely by Martin Del Rosario) as she tries to make sense of her life after going through the deaths of two of her friends and whether the life she's living is the right one for her. Joining her in her journey are Lou Veloso as the effervescent Mama Flora, Kiko Matos and Akihiro Blanco as Barbs' lovers and Chai Fonacier as the "wildcard."

Born Beautiful tackles the controversies of undergoing conversion therapy (a law was passed just hours ago banning them in NY) and polyamorous relationships (it's not for everyone but it works for others), which is brilliant considering gays, most notably transgenders have been told over the years that they are unlovable and the only way they can be loved is if money is involved. This movie is telling us that that's not the only way and they don't have to settle. At this time when it's easy to spread hate (fake news, bullying, etc.,) why not love as many as you can (in varying forms and degrees) for how can you go wrong with love?

As with the first installment, this one also elicited reactions from people who were obviously uncomfortable with some of the scenes, most notably the kissing between two male actors. This in turn made me feel uncomfortable which reinforces the stigma that LGBT shouldn't publicly display their affection, that only straight people are allowed to do that. That we should censor ourselves so as not to offend others in order to be accepted by society at large. That way, the old one, reinforces the need to be "acceptable" at our expense. What this movie does is it pushes us back out into the light, telling us not to hide anymore. If the first movie's theme was asking for acceptance, this time around we're taking it, that we're here, we're queer and we will not live in fear because not everyone will die beautiful, but everyone was born beautiful and deserves to live beautiful.

Needless to say that I had never heard about this 2019 Filipino comedy titled "Born Beautiful" prior to stumbling upon it whilst perusing the Filipino movie catalogue on Netflix. And seeing that the movie had Martin Del Rosario on the cast list, I opted to sit down and watch it.

The storyline in "Born Beautiful", as written by Rody Vera, Elmer Gatchalian, Ivan Andrew Payawal and Fatrick Tabada, was a bit dull and slow paced, and that made sitting through 96 minutes of watching it feel somewhat prolonged and a bit of an effort. I feel that there was a lot of potential to the script and characters, but the writers didn't really fully take advantage of that.

The acting performances in "Born Beautiful" were good, and truth be told, then it is certainly an actor like Martin Del Rosario that makes movies like this watchable. He carried the movie quite nicely with his performance.

The character gallery in "Born Beautiful" was diverse, varied and somewhat funny. The Mama Flora character, played by actor Lou Veloso, was definitely memorable, and one that has to be seen to be believed.

"Born Beautiful", from director Perci M. Intalan, is a movie that perhaps has a wider appeal to a Filipino audience more than a non-Filipino audience. But hey, I can check it off of my watched-movies-list now. However, I doubt that I will ever return to watch it a second time, because the storyline wasn't impressive.

My rating of "Born Beautiful" lands on a four out of ten stars.