Metro Manila Film Festival 2023: Perfect for Holy Week tv

Movie Review
Rewind
Directed by: Mae Czarina Cruz
MTRCB Rating: PG

By Zsarlene B. Chua

REWIND has a very simple premise: what would you do differently if you went back in time? For John Nuñez (Dingdong Dantes), he would try to make things right with everyone, especially with his family, after spending many years being a selfish cad.

A well-respected executive in a whiskey company, John, has always been on a mission to prove that he deserves to be the top dog even if it means putting female co-workers like Vivian (Sue Ramirez), or his family on the back burner. Meanwhile, his long-suffering wife, Mary (played by his real-life wife Marian Rivera), picks up the slack and raises their child Austin (Alonzo Muhlach) alone as John continues to neglect them.

After the owner of the whiskey company and John’s father figure passes him over for a promotion and favors Vivian, John goes on a bender which eventually results in (spoiler!) Mary’s death (Ms. Rivera is found launched through the family sedan’s windshield after a car crash). In his grief, he meets Lods (Pepe Herrera) or God, who gives him a chance to go back to the day before and correct his mistakes (an actual deus ex machina). The catch is that someone else needs to die that day and John has to choose who does.

Rewind is a movie that is very upfront about its religious influences. The names of the couple–John and Mary–are biblical, and even Mary’s death at 3 p.m. bore religious significance (this was supposedly the time when Jesus died on the cross). This film would be a perfect choice for Holy Week.

It’s also a film that’s very big on how actions have consequences and that everything comes at a price. This film has a dash of magic realism and a world where God roams around freely like God in Joan of Arcadia (2003), the fantasy drama series that popularized the song “One of Us” by Joan Osborne.

It’s a very simple story but the beauty of the film was in how everything was tied together in the end. It’s a masterclass of using Chekhov’s gun to show–not tell–how the story is going.

It’s also a film that balanced out humor and dramatic scenes — with the main comedic acts being Joross Gamboa as John’s assistant Lucio and Pepe Herrera as Jess or Lods (imagine Jesus as comic relief!). The entire cinema was in tears in turns from both sadness and laughter at the same time. It was a very Filipino approach, where even the most dramatic scenes deserve a bit of levity.

Both Mr. Dantes and Ms. Rivera pulled all the stops in showing off their dramatic acting chops. Be it by virtue of them being a long-time married couple or because they’ve been a love team for even longer, the pair convincingly showed the ups and downs of marriage. It was very easy to imagine that they really were John and Mary especially during the most heart-wrenching scenes.

The film also made very clever use of endorsements. Admittedly, this writer, who used to count how many in-your-face endorsements were in a Vice Ganda or Vic Sotto movie, became nostalgic seeing pretty blatant endorsements from Shield bath soap and Ensure. I did appreciate how the endorsements were folded into the narrative somewhat — like the time when John kept looking at the time on his Police wristwatch or when Ensure was in the background of John’s father’s store, or when the soap was used in a homegrown ritual of washing hands before dinner.

Is it a good film? Yes. There’s beauty in its simplicity and tight storytelling; the ending is very satisfying and convincing. There’s a lot of rewatch value in Rewind, especially during the holidays or Holy Week, as mentioned. It also makes a case for the benefit of therapy, because had John gone to therapy to address his childhood traumas (discussed in the film by “Jesus” himself), he would’ve been better equipped as a father and husband for his family. And the most important lesson in the film? The symptoms of heartburn or indigestion are eerily similar to a heart attack.