My Neighbor’s Wife (2011)
Aaron and Giselle are an ambitious couple, but their hard work isn’t enough to provide for the comfortable life they desire. The marriage of their well-to-do bosom buddies, Bullet and Jasmine, also goes from bliss to bleak. Their situation heads further south when Bullet ends up in bed with a distraught and inebriated Giselle! Many confrontations later, Jasmine is seen sharing late-night trysts with Aaron while their repentant spouses patiently wait for them at home! With friends like these, who needs enemies?
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A Disappointing Continuation
It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
'Jun Lana' (qv)'s 6th directorial work, MY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE (2011), is a marital melodrama that starts earnestly enough, has weepy parts in the middle, but doesn't know how to wrap things up in the finale.Bullet ('Jake Cuenca' (qv)) and Jasmine ('Carla Abellana' (qv)) are seemingly happily married, and their bar business is doing great. Bullet's best friend Aaron ('Dennis Trillo' (qv)) and his wife Cielo ('Lovi Poe' (qv)) don't enjoy the same successful existence, but Aaron is a loyal and hardworking husband. A simple problem reverberates and becomes a mountain of lies, secrets and, ultimately, revenge.Without spoiling key plots (although one can predict the wife-swapping factor from the title, and poster, alone), suffice it to say that Lana then douses the film in a bowl of pathos, as the four main characters hurt, recriminate, retaliate, reconcile, and try to fix their lives and relationships. Happily, Lana and cast avoid the histrionics (which sometimes Poe and Abellana are prone to, in their TV soaps) one has come to associate with such dramatic fare.What puzzles me is the indeterminate time Lana (and co-writer 'Denoy Punio' (qv)) spends on Aaron's character. Understandably, his character is the more interesting of the men, since in the beginning he was an faithful husband looking for that one great successful venture that would seal things nicely. As he gradually becomes obsessed with Jasmine, the character of Bullet takes to the sidelines. Additionally, the two leading men are given flesh-baring scenes, to add to the merry mix of pent-up emotions and betrayals.Alas, Lana fails to wrap things up nicely, and the ending, at the airport, is just too glib and too pat for words. But the cast is to be commended, and the music of 'Jesse Lucas (I)' enhances the viewer's enjoyment of this wife-swapping melodrama.