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My Brother’s Wife is the story of Zoe (Barbara Mori) and Ignacio (Christian Meier), a couple still childless after so many years. A busy businessman who goes off on business trips alone, Ignacio has a shortcoming: no matter how carnally needy his beauteous wife is, he won’t budge unless it’s a Saturday, his love-making day. Making matters worse is the fact that she wants a child but her husband is sterile; he suggests adoption but she nixes it. She pours all her woes into the ear of her gay friend Boris (Bruno Bichir) who is sympathetic but is also amoral when it comes to Zoe’s right to the pursuit of happiness. The good wife Zoe feels lonely and neglected but tries to understand her husband. Enter Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona), Ignacio’s kid brother, a painter who lives off Ignacio’s monthly support. To make a long story short, Zoe and Gonzalo have an affair, and she gets pregnant—a crisis that unlocks secrets from the brothers’ past.
The plot is melodramatic, predictable, and worn-out from overuse in all media where adultery sells: from true-confession magazines to telenovelas. Because it is so focused on the sexual starvation aspect of the triangle, the characters are not given the chance to develop, thus robbing the story of depth and realism. All characters are stereotypes: Ignacio is the businessman who cannot satisfy his wife; Zoe is the neglected wife who turns elsewhere for attention; Gonzalo is the bad boy type who charms the pants off women despite his grimy fingernails and jeans; the mother (Angelica Aragon) is blind to the flaws of her sons; the gay friend is about as gay as your favorite haircutter. All of them live in their individual isolated world and see only what they want to see—in fact, only the housemaid sees what she doesn’t want to see (the lovers smooching in the kitchen) but decides it’s none of her business. My Brother’s Wife picks an excellent setting to establish mood—the couple’s house which is made mostly of concrete and steel. Its austere lines, masonry and metal elements are reminiscent of prison walls, cold, gray and hard, not very conducive to marital intimacy.
After viewing My Brother’s Wife, one asks, “What’s the point of the movie?” It brings up delicate topics—abortion, homosexuality, et al—but does not care to make a stand on them. And even when things are resolved in the end, the movie gives the impression that there was nothing better it could do anyway, so they played safe hoping to satisfy the audience with a tepid conclusion that’s devoid of conviction. The movie could have redeemed itself considering the big issues it covers, but it seems everything else was just packaging for its real content which is—hold your breath—porn. In fact, CINEMA wishes to raise, with all due respect, a question regarding the movie’s classification by the MTRCB—R-13. How can a movie that contains such explicit sexual activity (that’s putting it mildly) be okay for 13-year olds to see? Then again, because it is rated R-13, it is running at SM outlets which in the not so distant past had barred R-18 movies from being shown in their theaters, giving the impression that they wanted to give only wholesome entertainment. So what happened? Just asking. From CINEMA’s point of view it’s an adult movie not worth spending on—even with a 20% Senior Citizen’s discount.
(Date Reviewed: 08 February 2008)
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