Sa Muli Review: Initially released theatrically in the Philippines earlier this year, the Filipino movie in the Tagalog language has now received its OTT premiere on Amazon Prime Video in select regions. Starring Xian Lim as Victor/ Nicolas/ Pep and Ryza Cenon as Belen/ Aurora/ Elly in lead roles, the fantasy romance film has been written and directed by Fifth Solomon.
The title translates to “Once Again” in English, signifying the underlying theme of reincarnation, and the lovers meeting again and again. Now streaming online, the film has a runtime of 127 minutes. It also stars Candy Pangilinan, Josef Elizalde, Carlyn Ocampo and Andrea Babierra in supporting roles, and has been produced by Vincent Del Rosario III and Veronique Del Rosario-Corpus under the banner of Viva Films, with Vic Del Rosario Jr as the executive producer.
Sa Muli Movie Review Does Not Contain Spoilers
Sa Muli Review: Discussion
The Filipino flick commences with an all too familiar premise of a fated love story, in which the same pair of lovers find themselves being pulled towards each other upon every reincarnation. But, the slight twist in the plot this time grants the hero with the ability of retaining the memories of his past lives as well. However, the woman he’s always been in love with remains clueless and indifferent to his claims related their rebirth, destiny and whatnot.
On being brought back to life in 2020, his third lifetime, Pep starts looking for his beloved yet again, almost as if to complete a lacking part of his life. His mission this time is not only restricted to finding his way back to Aurora (one of her old names), but also to help keep her alive because, so far, each time their love story has failed owing to her untimely death. And so, the movie gets on with the image of the modern era, wherein Pep attempts to come to terms with his past trauma by penning his words and memories down as a novelist.
Throughout it all, Pep continues to fall for the new Aurora, now-Elly, but the movie fails to keep the viewers on their toes and falls short in terms of entertaining the audience. I lost interest quite early on, and being an ardent Y2K Bollywood films’ watcher, I’ve repeatedly encountered the issue of reincarnation associated with love stories in Hindi movies. On looking from afar, Sa Muli stays on track with all the typical tropes of this genre, and even though many films from this category carry with them a sense of predictability, they’re still able to get themselves off the ground at some point.
The Lim-Cenon starrer, however, is never able to catch up to its ideas and what it really wants to convey to its viewers. Yes, it’s a definite predictable mess, but then it also slows down due to the overall monotonous tone that guides its storyline. Right when I started watching this movie, I’d already called out how it would end, and the ending agrees with my thoughts, but that gave me no sense of satisfaction because I was hoping for this story to be more than that.
Ryza Cenon and Xian Lim emerge as two good actors trying to make do with the script in their hands. Somehow, they pull off each era’s representation with classic imagery of dramatisation, but eventually even their onscreen chemistry gets eaten up by the uninspired story. The movie’s trailer also set apart the question as to why was destiny pushing for these two people to meet each other in every life, when its greater conspiracy always hinged on tragically destroying their lives in the process. Despite highlighting possibly the most important aspect of the story’s foundation, the result doesn’t pull up with the promised answers and leaves us hanging.
Moreover, even after spending a good duration of two hours on building the bridges between these characters’ three lifetimes, the story’s writing never attempts to courageously and profoundly problematise the idea of falling for the same person again and again. Pep just understands that he’s been in love with this particular woman during his previous lives, and that alone becomes his guiding force on this journey to search for her again. The movie plays no daring cards out on its characters, rather keeps flowing with the flow, which essentially is the major reason for the boredom caused by it.
Never does Pep stop and ask himself if he’s merely been in love with the idea of this fated love scenario, or if he actually loves the person in question. Plus, when he and Elly meet in their new lives, a redundant inclusion of tasteless comedy is inserted into the action, but again, this doesn’t work in the favour of the narrative. It seems as if these characters simply fall in love because they’ve been wired to do so.
Not once does the movie take a chance to interrogate why they must fall for each other at all, and because of that, we’re also not offered a glimpse into a cohesive growth of their feelings for each other. In that way, the movie only seems to be concerned with getting from point A to point B, but has no interest in visualising the emotional journey undertaken to complete the mentioned journey.
Sa Muli: Final Thoughts
If you’re familiar with the leading actors, then you can probably give this film a chance because it overtly puts their multiple reincarnated characters in different settings and that could be the one positive attraction for you as an audience. However, other than, despite the movie incessantly discussing about love, it can’t seem to grasp the emotion’s immense gravity. Repetitive visions of the two actors sitting down for staring contests are invoked, but again their importance is never fully weighed out for the film to mean something more to us.
Sa Muli is now streaming on Prime Video (select regions).
Also read: Blue Again Review: A Personal Exploration That Is Over-Stretched