Laurice Guillen’s American Adobo is the latest, um, dish in the seemingly endless string of food-themed melodramas that have stuffed the indie marketplace since Ang Lee delivered Eat Drink Man Woman. Less appetizing than Tortilla Soup but nowhere near as shrill as ABCD, American Adobo keeps the food on the backburner, letting wounded Philippine-American hearts simmer before a magical-realist vision of New York. Vincent R. Nebrida’s story is likeable in spite of the mawkish emotional predicaments of his characters: Mike (Christopher De Leon) itches for politicized times of yore at the risk of losing his family; the vain Marissa (Dina Bonnevie) lets her studly boyfriend get in the way of her happiness; the womanizing Raul (Paolo Montalban) gets an HIV test; Gerry (Ricky Davao) owns up to his sexuality at the risk of alienating his traditionalist mother; and Tere (Cherry Pie Picache) must confront her inner-old maid. Nebrida implies Gerry’s closet-homosexuality via the character’s references to “Torvill and Dean” and his frustration over Forrest Gump having won the Oscar (coupled with his desire to be a creative director). So, there are enough clichés and Three’s Company-style sucker punches here to stink up Tere’s American adobo, but after a Magnolia-style chaos linker (no singing here, just some letter reading), Guillen begins to home in on the individual panels of her broad tapestry. Declarations of love are made, tears flow in sync with a winter’s snowfall and Guillen stages an uncomfortably brave “coming out” ritual inside the hospital room of Gerry’s dying lover. New Years resolutions are made and emotions are nakedly purged before a skyline that is made all the more surreal by the presence of the World Trade Center in the background.
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