Carlo Aquino and Bela Padilla return to what they do best

February 27 ------ Chemistry is the easiest thing to talk about and the hardest thing to fake. You can rehearse lines, block scenes, polish a look, or even time a pause. But when two actors truly click, the camera doesn’t “capture” it — it simply bears witness.

In a story about forgetting, this choice is significant: the body retains memories even as the mind begins to fade. That is the energy director Jerry Lopez Sineneng keeps returning to when talking about Carlo Aquino and Bela Padilla. At the media conference for their latest starrer, “A Special Memory,” he didn’t even pretend this was the kind of spark you can summon by willpower or wishful thinking. He called it what it is: “magic.”

“As a director, that’s one of the most overused words that is also so hard to define, chemistry,” he said, half-joking as he leaned into the point. “It just happens. Chemistry, it’s magic.” He sees it in their eyes — the way they react to each other, the way they support one another — the small things that can’t be taught and can’t be computed. “There really isn’t a definition like one plus one equals chemistry,” he added. That part, he stressed, lives in the artists themselves.

And for a director like him, that “magic” also means peace of mind. Even now, Sineneng admitted he still feels first-day nerves with seasoned actors: Will they trust him? Will they push back? Will they follow his direction? But with Carlo and Bela, he said there was none of that. They gave their trust right away, stayed open to adjustments and came in already understanding their characters so well that they even suggested ways to deepen their roles. For him, it felt like half the work was already done. It also helped that the film’s foundation was solid. With National Artist Ricky Lee’s script, Sineneng said the story flow was crystal clear, so small adjustments felt easy and collaborative.

Bela, for her part, talked about the material with the kind of pride that sounds like nerves turned into excitement. She called the script mature, grounded and at times “borderline poetic,” the sort of dialogue that makes an actor pause and ask if she is giving it justice because the lines are that good. It is also, she admitted, the kind of film that asks for everything. The goal is not to “perform pain” but to earn it.

Carlo’s take on their working dynamic was simpler and, in a way, more revealing. He said he enjoys working with Bela because she is a very giving actress. He also described her off-camera as playful, light, and the kind of co-star who makes the entire environment feel comfortable. And because “A Special Memory” revolves around the worth of what we hold on to, the conversation naturally drifted to what makes one “special” in the first place. It sounded like a beauty pageant prompt, but Carlo answered it plainly and with surprising weight: “The totality. Everything, altogether. Who you were with, when it happened, where it happened.”

In other words, it’s never just one detail. It’s the whole package, the person, the timing, the place, woven into something you can’t quite recreate. That whole-package idea is also embedded in how the film is built. It is a Philippine adaptation of the Japanese series “Pure Soul,” shaped to feel more Filipino, with family and surrounding relationships more fully fleshed out. Lee said that in writing the script, he was guided by one emotional north star: that love goes beyond illness, beyond time and beyond what the mind can keep.

Source: manilatimes.net