Always Yours, Never Mine is a love story that spans three decades, beginning on New Year’s Eve in 1999, when Apollo, or Pol (Joshua Garcia), and Luna (Julia Barretto) meet while waiting for the world to end.
Both are trying to escape the problems in their lives and, like many people at the time, believe that something might actually happen when the clock strikes midnight and the world enters the year 2000.
Of course, the world doesn’t end.
Instead, it marks the beginning of Pol and Luna’s friendship—and a love story that will follow them for the next 30 years.
The catch is that they never seem to fall in love at the right time. Pol falls in love with Luna first, but she is already in a relationship. Years later, when they meet again, their circumstances have changed, and so have their feelings.
This becomes the pattern of their relationship, with one seemingly ready when the other isn’t.
As someone from Gen X who was around their age at the turn of the millennium, I particularly enjoyed the first part of the movie. It felt nostalgic, and I actually wished they had stayed in that period a little longer.
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Always Yours, Never Mine: THE Pace and timing
This brings me to probably my biggest issue with Always Yours, Never Mine: the movie moves too fast for my liking.
The movie spans 30 years, and it really does feel like it has a lot of story to tell in a limited amount of time.
Just when you’re getting invested in one period of Pol and Luna’s lives, the movie moves on to another.
I found myself wishing it would linger a little longer in each chapter so I could become more attached to the characters.
I actually found the movie too short for the story it wanted to tell.
There was so much more of Pol and Luna’s story that I wanted to see, which is why I feel this could have worked better as an eight- or 16-episode series rather than a movie.
The material is there. You have a friendship that changes through the years, relationships with other people, missed opportunities, bad decisions, and two people who keep finding their way back into each other's lives.
I just wanted more time with all of it.
Pol and Luna are deeply flawed characters, which can make their story frustrating to watch at times. They make bad decisions, and even worse, they often make them at exactly the wrong time.
But then again, people do make bad decisions, especially when love is involved.
What I appreciated is that neither Pol nor Luna is portrayed as the perfect person who has simply been waiting for the other one all these years.
Both have their faults. Both hurt people along the way. And both have moments that redeem them.
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JOSHUA GARCIA AND JULIA BARRETTO's performance
Joshua and Julia, as expected, did well.
You can see that they're both very good actors, already tried and tested. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is one that was released as a screen-test video before the film came out.
It happens early in Pol and Luna's story, when Pol confronts Luna about the choices she's making for someone she loves.
In the video, you see the depth of emotion both actors are capable of.
But while Joshua and Julia are both good in the film, strangely, I didn't find their chemistry as strong as I expected it to be.
Maybe part of that is because I'm aware of their history as longtime love-team partners, as well as everything that has happened in their real lives.
That context was probably sitting somewhere at the back of my mind while I was watching. The acting is there. The emotional scenes work. But the romantic chemistry, for me, wasn't as effortless or as palpable as I thought it would be given how many years these two have worked together.
I would daresay this isn't the best performance I've seen from Joshlia. The one who really shone for me in this movie was Bianca Umali.
BIANCA UMALI SHINES AS GAEA
I've known Bianca could act since I saw her play a girl with cerebral palsy in an Eat Bulaga!'s lenten special in 2015.
I remember being impressed with her then and thinking this girl had serious acting chops.
Bianca plays Gaea, the third person in Pol and Luna’s love story.
She is beautiful and graceful in the role, but there is also so much depth in her performance.
You don't just understand what Gaea is feeling. You feel it with her and you feel for her.
And as the movie progresses, she becomes one of the most interesting characters in the story.
Always Yours, Never Mine: THE TWIST
There were parts of Always Yours, Never Mine that reminded me a bit of One More Chance and She's Dating the Gangster.
Both films were also directed by Cathy Garcia-Sampana, so maybe it's not surprising \
But for me, the best part of Always Yours, Never Mine is its story, written by Vanessa R. Valdez.
For all my issues with how quickly the movie moves through Pol and Luna's lives, I liked where Valdez eventually took the story.
I didn't expect the twist, and it made me see their love differently.
Without giving it away, the film isn't just about two people who spend decades missing their chance to be together.
It also asks what loving someone really means. Sometimes, love means denying yourself what you want because you want what is best for the person you love—even when that means the answer isn't you.
There is selfless love in this movie, although it takes some very questionable decisions to get there.
THE VERDICT
Always Yours, Never Mine isn't a perfect movie.
For me, the hiccup is that there simply isn't enough time to tell a story that spans 30 years.
But its strength is its story and what it ultimately has to say about love.
Pol, Luna, and Gaea are flawed. They hurt one another, make questionable choices, and don't always do the right thing.
But they also show us that love can take different forms, and that sometimes the most difficult choices are the most selfless ones.
Not everyone will agree with the choices these characters make, and not everyone will rave about the movie.
But by the end, I was sobbing. So despite wishing the story had more time to breathe, Always Yours, Never Mine ultimately delivered the emotional payoff.