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| Photo Credit: Cinemalaya |
Starring: Noel Comia Jr., Ricky Oriarte, Dave Justine Francis, Junyka Santarin, JR Custodio, Juancho Triviño, Rich Asuncion
Happy to report that Children of the River is not an artsy and ambiguous film about children spending their time in a river contrary to what it looks from its trailer and poster. It's actually a lighthearted film about a group of best friends in a small community who start their day with a phone call before spending time together: whether playing make-believe soldiers in a forest or watching basketball in their barrio. It's a portrait of friendship, self-discovery, and family in the province. It's generally fun until it's not.
Children of the River has bigger themes than its surface. Most of the film is spent on the bonding of four best friends, portrayed by Noel Comia Jr., Ricky Oriarte, Dave Justine Francis, and Junyka Santarin. They perfectly capture the innocence kids in barrios do in their day-to-day lives. The theme of acceptance becomes the sole focus when Comia's character Elias, starts to discover feelings for an outsider named Ted. It's difficult to not compare this to Call Me By Your Name, especially since they share several cinematic parallels, from the bikes to the dance party, and at one point they even changed his name to Elia.
It's a feel-good film until they reveal that the phone calls they've been receiving are from their fathers who are soldiers fighting in Marawi. It suddenly turned into a huge bowl of cliche and lines become overly-sentimental, which weirdly works just fine during the first half of the film. Jay Manalo as a war survivor even has a long monologue about soldiers and it's too preachy for it to be moving.
But throughout the course of it, I've grown to appreciate the friendship formed in this film. Its depiction of kids being kids is very close to reality, and the thought of families being left behind because of war is effective.
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