“FLOTSAM” dwells on the exploits of eight prospective pairs about love and its endless possibilities.
That’s an ambitious narrative expanse to cover, and the film struggles to put them up together, and fully mine the depth of its sentimentality, but it does deliver some magic with breathtaking renders of its setting. At some point, the shift from one subplot to another hampers what could have been an effective build-up for its side stories, barely projecting a salient sentiment that may have been fully gotten across given with better maneuver and utilization of the characters and their stories.
The film fails to delve deeper to its heart, that it barely fulfills its promises, but it has some striking exquisiteness on the surface to cover for its narrative shortcomings.
Running through the course of a few days, the film intersects through the lives of its players in the sleepy surfing town of San Juan, La Union. The very setting becomes an impeccable tool to relay a couple of tangible messages, and Jay Abello, its director who is also a capable cinematographer, knows how to handle it well, fully knowledgeable how to connect them with the very messages that his characters are trying to get across.
At its core, is Kai (Solenn Heusaff), a young architect running away from an oncoming marriage. She arrives in San Juan to clear her confusion about her engagement, only to be stirred further by an unexpected connection she finds with Tisoy (Rocco Nacino), the hostel’s bartender. Radiating around this core, is an entanglement of several plotlines that may have been all successful crafting themselves into one solid storyline, if knitted altogether with proper attention, and provided with enough details to construct a more commanding build-up.
These ephemeral, but often sensual, story arcs are just too slim and shallow to conjure up a surge of emotions, and they exist in a milieu whose more prominent sentiments may have been more suited for a heart-wrenching tragic love story that clings on the promises of destiny and forever.
But the film is less caring of those concerns, its take only sober and calculated, so as for it to not over sensationalize what could have been a cheesier or dramatic romance, almost only leaning towards the sensuality of its proceedings, to convey a drawing sentimentality. There’s a dose of humor that often lands at right places, some inconveniently misplaced.
On the inside, there’s probably a more affecting romantic disasters waiting to be unleashed, but the narrative itself, obviates from any overt sentimentality, and makes its characters almost only live in the temporariness of the moment, and its surreal relaxing vibe that washes out the tension and pressures of urban landscape.
Most commendable, perhaps, about the film, is that it could have not done any better showcasing the beauty of its setting. If it’s all in the cinematography, and all its breathtaking visual exploits, then “FLOTSAM” is beyond good.
However, there is nothing more those screaming frames could have done other than making the film just okay, and that is okay. There is nothing much to commend about the actors’ performances, but mostly everybody has done decent , and that’s already acceptable, given the narrative, itself, has deprived them enough material to work with.
Overall, “FLOTSAM” is a visual feast bereft of a solid narrative. It has some sentiments that may have the capacity to linger for some longer time, but for a film that seems to gather attention only for what is happening at the moment, waiting for that thrusting climax can be just as tiring as waiting for the big waves to arrive.
We might as well just enjoy and fleet at the goodness of the moment as we wait.
RATING: 6/10 (JE)
