No Other Woman (2011)

A former American boss Lead Character had once said: "Cover your ears, Lead Character, because you are not going to like what I am about to say." Then he turned to his colleague. "So many people here cheat. Cheating is like an epidemic in this country."

Lead Character squirmed in his seat. He didn't quite get why his boss would say such a thing, when in the U.S., their former President, while in office, was caught sticking his dick in an intern's mouth.

Thankfully, the colleague answered: "But it's not just here. Cheating is everywhere."

Right on! But the bigger challenge may be here in the Philippines, because when a spouse cheats, you do not have the option to divorce. So how Filipinos handle infidelity is not so much as easy as handling it in the U.S., where you can just threaten your spouse of taking everything he/she's got.

Such challenge is portrayed admirably in the movie No Other Woman, directed by Ruel S. Bayani, written by Kris Gazmen, Jay Fernando, and Keiko Aquino. Admirable because everything is so hammy right off the bat it's hardly real life. The very first scene finds Cara (Anne Curtis) emerging from the water as if she were in a canned tuna commercial. She just walks towards the shore with brazen sexuality, without even tilting her head repeatedly to get seawater off her ear. And that's how Lead Character found the movie admirable. They could have taken themselves too seriously and Lead Character would have puked inside the theater. Instead, it was done with a kind of self-ridicule that Lead Character is not unfamiliar with.

The series of banters between the mistress, Cara, and the wife, Sharmaine (Christine Reyes), is an instant classic. Mistresses and wives in real life will now have something to say to each other without having to go on an all-out catfight. They will now settle with sarcasm, with repressed rage pulsing desperately to erupt. Instead of talking about their husbands directly, they will use designer bags as an allusion to their men.

Lead Character cannot blame the long line at the theaters on the movie's opening day. The trailer was deemed one of the best everyone has seen in recent years. The last movie trailer that affected Lead Character so much was the one for I Am Sam (2001), only to get disappointed upon watching the movie itself. But No Other Woman did not disappoint. Its trailer really was just the tip of the iceberg. The movie contained more classic banters between Cara and Sharmaine that one could hope for, and even more memorable lines from Sharmaine's mother (Carmi Martin), that despite Lead Character's plan of sleeping through the movie, he stayed up the whole time.

When the husband, Ram (Derek Ramsay), was caught with a hickey on his neck, he just maintained that he was stung by a jellyfish. So Sharmaine's mother commented: "Ganyan talaga pag galing sa makakating dikya. . .nagmamarka." ("That's how it is if it comes from itchy jellyfish. . .it leaves a mark.")

Who the hell can sleep through that?

Seriously, No Other Woman is that fun. So fun that you don't want it to end, especially that it has a lazy ending. Because the writers probably ran out of ideas on how to end the story properly, they relied on the best way to resolve problems: a life-threatening vehicular accident.

Yes, that's a spoiler. Ram gets into a car accident, forcing Cara to back away and Sharmaine to forgive her husband.

So to sum everything up: it's a fun movie, but you already know the ending, so don't watch it.