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Gio is a freelance graphic artist, a 25-year old Amboy who lives the bohemian lifestyle, with his cigarettes, tattoos and motorcycle. Joanne is a province lass who takes her office work in the big city very seriously, eyeing to be a brand manager within five years. Of course, one day they meet and fall in love. However, later on their fairy-tale relationship, they face real-life challenges of limited finances, career decisions, and time apart. Will Gio and Joanne get to fulfill their promise of forever?

"Never Not Love You" is the first movie of the very popular JaDine love team that I had seen. You can sense their easy chemistry together, how comfortable they were with each other. It was skillful how they transitioned from the giddy sweetness of their carefree courtship to the more sedate maturity of their troubled "married" life. They repeatedly profess their love to each other, but even the way they said these words delicately evolved with their varying emotions.

James Reid's effortless hip vibe worked well for him. His performance was rather hampered by his inability to deliver his Filipino lines smoothly, but this limitation was still within his character. The British accent he gained later in the film was a nicely done with subtlety. Since he is supposed to be a gifted artist, I felt they should have given him better-looking tattoo designs than the ugly ones we see on his arms.

Nadine Lustre fared better in the acting department with her expressive face very effectively conveying all the emotions her character went through even without words. Her scene on the bed as she shed mixed tears of sadness and happiness was excellent. I could feel her intense conflict of emotions in London by her body language alone. I could not judge how well she delivered those lines in the Sambal dialect, but she did sound very relaxed, not forced.

One reason I felt compelled to watch this film was when I learned that Nadine's character Joanne hailed from Iba, Zambales, which is my mother's hometown, hence my personal interest in the place. However, despite all the time and budget the production spent showcasing London and its tourist landmarks, they did not even show anything identifiable about Iba at all in any of the scenes supposedly set there. Yes, I was disappointed about this, but I also have to confess that I am not aware if that lake or that straw field was actually in the outskirts of Iba.

The situations in this film are not exactly fresh. We have seen many iterations of this story of an idyllic relationship encountering career bumps along the way, with various results. Writer-director Antonette Jadaone gave it her own brand of romance and tempered it with realism. While the scene onscreen shows one thing, the ending director Jadaone gave her film felt open to me, we the audience provide our own interpretation of what was going to happen next. I liked it that way. 7/10

This review was originally published in the author's blog, "Fred Said."