This beguiling romance offers a fresh take on a familiar premise. At its heart is a story about love, tolerance and honesty. For all its anodyne rom-com silliness, however, 4 Days (Phoenix Features, 2016) is also funny, sad and beautiful in equal measure. Mark's (Mikoy Morales) facial expression is most affecting. With a few well-placed glance, a furtive look at his college roommate Derek (Sebastian Castro), a pained expression, a brow sorrowfully furrowed, Morales adeptly manages to capture the anxiety of being gay with dexterity. He is this film’s emotional rock. Morales navigates excitement, happiness, sadness, guilt and anger equally well and Castro lends strong complementary performance. This movie’s storyline does come carefully encased in an unassumingly conservative plot superstructure, but what a smart, fun, engaging film. Director Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr. (working from a sharp and funny screenplay he co-wrote with his lead actors) does a nimble job of placing us in Mark and Derek's shoes. The story’s lightness is, in a sense, the source of its charm. The issues that gay youths face are, in many respects, more interesting and the breakthroughs on that front continue apace. Alix brought an idyllic authenticity to 4 Days just like picking the right person in your love triangle or finding love before the big dance.Yes, the film does everything it can do to parboil the flavor, color, consistency and fabulousness out of its queer romance, until all that's left is the familiar beige, featureless pap of overcooked heterosexual rom-coms. But that's kind of the point. Why shouldn't queer kids get the chance to see generic, mass-produced versions of themselves onscreen, overcoming minor obstacles on their path to true love? They absolutely should and with 4 Days (and the films that follow) they will, but it's the quieter, deeper storyline that forms its true emotional center.
The cast and filmmakers stir elements of secrets and lies for all they’re worth, prizing telling details and piercing observation over broad comedy. Relationships that in the film’s first moments seemed simple prove prickly and complex. 4 Days isn’t frank or revelatory in the vein of the best queer cinema. It avoids much talk of arousal and it delays its first same-sex kiss and then scores it to onlookers just in case viewers aren’t sure how to feel about it. This is crowd-pleasing filmmaking, so, of course, it’s in some ways behind the times. There may be little in this movie that you haven’t seen before, but the perspective through which you’re seeing it makes all the difference. The events aren't really surprising. Rather, the film focuses on the one thing it does differently, making the romantic quest at the center of the story gay rather than straight and it can't be denied that it does make the tired formula feel ever so slightly fresh for having done so. When the movie shifts into its inevitable third act, it takes a fresh turn which we obviously don't get from standard romance. The formula works regardless of the sexual orientation of the characters involved. 4 Days is a dubious step on the road to equality, proof that conventional romantic dramas are no longer limited to straight people. The polished soundtrack still allows for a procession of acutely observed details, from the hypersensitivity around how others discuss sexuality to the unspoken jealousy aimed at those able to conduct themselves with more surface-level comfort. 4 Days seems a bit too tame to be entirely plausible from start to finish, but it’s hard for find fault with any film that addresses a changing world with such compassion and decency. An unexpected delight in more ways than one.
Directed By: Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.
Sound: Jason Conanan
Music: Mikoy Morales
Production Design: Arthur Maningas
Cinematography: Albert Banzon
Screenplay: Adolfo Alix Jr., Mikoy Morales, Sebastian Castro
