BELA Padilla and JC Santos have done four films before: “100 Tula Para Kay Stella”, “The Day After Valentine”, “Of Vodka, Beers & Regrets” and “366”, all dramas. This time, they do a romcom, “Wish You Were the One”, written by Enrico Santos and directed by Derick Cabrido, who’s better known for dark and horror films and series.

Bela Padilla plays Astrud, the enterprising owner of a store for curtains and uniforms. She comes from a broken family as her mom (Che Ramos) cannot stand the penurious life her dad (Romnick Sarmenta) has to offer and left them. She has a boyfriend, Jordan (Kean Cipriano), a chef, but she also left him as she’s very ambitious and wants to put up her own business.

JC Santos is Ellis, a landscape artist who’s an only child. He is reserved, quiet with serious anger management issues. He has a girlfriend, Zoe (Franki Russel), and he proposes marriage to her, but she rejects him.

Astrud and Ellis have been meeting in various places without their being aware of it. But now, they are both invited to the same-sex wedding of two male friends in Tagaytay. Astrud goes to gate crash as the chef in the wedding reception is Jordan and she wants to talk to him, while Ellis attends it feeling nervous because Zoe will also be there.

Astrud is not allowed to enter as her name is not in the list of guests, so she tries to convince Ellis to take her with him as he’s allowed to have a companion. Ellis agrees to take her only if she’d agree to pretend that he is his girlfriend in front of Zoe and their friends.

The movie has many laugh out loud scenes as Astrud and Ellis mutually make up fabricated stories to convince Zoey’s friends that they have really known each other for quite sometime.

In the process, the film resorts to flashback sequences where Astrud and Ellis are both there, but without knowing of each other’s presence, like when Astrud and Jordan first met at the UP Oblation Run, which features so many naked butts.

Then there’s the scene where Ellis and Zoe first meet with Zoe being allergic to the plant Ellis gives her. They call an ambulance to take her to the hospital and it happens to be driven by Astrud’s dad and she was coincidentally with her dad at that time.

In the course of the wedding reception, Astrud and Ellis realize that they compliment and maybe even be meant for each other, even if they just met each other on that day. Normally, this kind of instant love affair will be difficult to buy but, in fairness to Enrico Santos, he has a well written script.

The characters are very well delineated and you will really root for Astrud and Ellis, who are both imperfect people just like the rest of us. Since the movies of the Bela-JC tandem always have an unhappy ending, there’s a tear-soaked sequence here that will meet such expectations of the audience.

The film works mainly because the two leads give winning performances. JC perfectly fits the role of the edgy, easily agitated, but very vulnerable Ellis. He matches Bela tears for tears in their crying scenes and he also matches her madcap behavior, like in their dancing sequence.

As for Bela, she is given the chance here to do comedy and she most certainly shines in all her comic scenes. She executes the rapid-fire delivery of her lines with an assured casualness and her comic delivery is just flawless, like in that scene where she is ranting against herself inside the ladies room, then Franki suddenly enters and the tone of her voice also changes in a jiffy.

Bela and JC are known for their “manapakit” movies with distressingly hurtful endings. You’d think this movie also ends on a very upsetting painful note, but don’t leave the theatre right away after the initial end credits as it will still spring a pleasant surprise for the hopeless romantics among you.

It’s nice to know that Direk Cabrido is quite capable of coming up with a lighthearted film like this after his very dark works like “Clarita” and “Deadly Love”.