“If you love me why are you making me choose?” - Joy
The audience experiences a range of emotions after two hours of watching an eye-opening film. The film depicts an OFW's life in Hong Kong, highlighting the struggles and sacrifices made in order to survive. Nonetheless, the film's romantic taste thoroughly catches the audience's hearts. The film depicted two OFWs who are destined to change each other's lives for the rest of their life. Joy and Ethan quickly develop a friendship. Against Hongkong's grime and granulate, the two became each other's happiness.
Joy Fabregas (Kathryn Bernando), the main character, is a nursing graduate from the Philippines who works as a domestic worker in Hong Kong and is the family's breadwinner. She hopes to move to Canada to pursue her dream and put her degree to good use. Her plans also include petitioning her father and siblings to allow them to live together in the same country.
In her journey in achieving her goals, she meets Ethan (Alden Richards), a charismatic playboy who works as a bartender and has lived in Hong Kong for a long time and will become a permanent resident in the nation in a few years. He wants to cultivate friendship after avoiding life's responsibilities, and he's always been interested in learning more about Joy. Joy, on the other hand, didn't appear to mind because she was adamant about working.
Joy eventually softened Ethan, and the two of them developed genuine feelings for each other. As her papers for Canada were being prepared, she found that her mother no longer wants to be with them, and her father had also withdrawn her plans, causing her to become futile. Ethan was also insistent about her staying with him and continuing to have a life with him, which resulted in a series of heartfelt conversations about her choosing herself, her aspirations, and her dreams over her chance to be with her true love.
Ethan comes to the realization that setting Joy free to achieve her self-development would be the right thing to do and when the time finally comes when both of them have reached the point that they are satisfied with what has attained then they could rekindle the old flame.
Hello, Love, Goodbye’s love story is not new, yet it provides us with a unique perspective of the realities of being an overseas worker. With ferocious intensity, the film peels away the layers of the OFW experience. Instead of focusing on the employee-employer interaction as shown in other films about OFWs, Molina, the film's director, focuses on the OFWs themselves and their families back home.
It strips down the glamour of Hong Kong, as we follow Joy waking up at 5 a.m. every day, hustling through the crowded streets of Hong Kong, away from her family, and never catching a dream. On Sundays in Central, she sits on top of cardboard crates, juggling her employer's kid and grandma while also selling power banks as a side job (which is illegal). In describing these trials, the author uses a combination of drama and clarity, and most importantly, tells the "whys."
It is unavoidable that some of us believe that OFWs enjoy a fantastic life because they have stepped foot in another country and have a lot of money. As a result, this demonstrates the reality that they undergo just to provide for their families, and it eventually clears our minds of that perception. Focusing on the characters' stories teaches us that choosing oneself over everything else is self-love. It teaches us to be brave in our love and to determine whether it is for the better. This film is relatable for some reason that it is more than a love story or an OFW story. It is a film that teaches us the importance of choosing ourselves first, finding ourselves, and loving ourselves because we often fail to do so because we are too preoccupied with meeting others' expectations of us and how we can please them.
Hello, Love, Goodbye stands out as a film that ventured to go beyond the romance of the main characters. What sets this film unique from previous Pinoy OFW films is the tremendous effort to keep it true to the OFWs story, while yet providing good value entertainment. Joy's exhaustion and determination to overcome the difficulties to achieve her goals are captured in this enthusiastic montage of her daily routine. This is countered with a more gentle portrayal of OFWs than in the past movies. Gone, for instance, are the overly-dramatic monologues on strife to ungrateful family members.
Kathryn, who plays Joy, completed the majority of the dramatic work, being true to her character throughout the romance and fan service scenes. Alden, who plays Ethan, served as a counterpoint to her character, lightening the tone and making the scenes entertaining while also holding his own in dramatic scenes. They're such unique and amazing individuals, each with their very own flaws and characteristics. Without Kathryn Bernando and Alden Richards' outstanding performances, this movie would not have been nearly as powerful. It was so prudent that I forgot I was watching a movie; instead, it felt like I was peering towards another person's life and seeing it unfold. Because the performance was so incredible and realistic, there were some parts of the film that brought me to tears.
The easiest flaw to find in Hello, Love, Goodbye would be how the Star Cinema cannot loosen its love story formula, and how pick-up and "hugot" lines have become pretty common in attracting audiences. There are times when it feels like Ethan and Joy are going a little too far with the whole "I love you, I don't love you" thing, but thankfully, everything was handled sensibly and in a less melodramatic manner within the narrative.
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