AT FIRST glance, the current film ?Noy? is a unique and important project because it sets its protagonist?s personal drama within a significant social context, including the recently concluded national elections.

Even more impressively, it?s able to dovetail its personal story with an insider?s courage of presidential bet Noynoy Aquino?s actual campaign.

This is an opportunity that comes very rarely, so the production should be credited for having swung it.

The next question is, has the rare opportunity been productively and creatively used to effect the vivification of one of the movie?s apparent themes? They include the instructive fusion of fact and fiction in its dramatic appreciation of the pressing issues that make any new national leader?s ascent to power a decidedly dicey proposition.

?Docu? coverage

Initially quite cogently, the film posits its ?docu? coverage of the Aquino campaign with the topical drama of its protagonist?s messy, strangely detached and extremely troubled life:

We learn that Noy, the young TV journalist (Coco Martin) shooting the coverage, isn?t even a real broadcast professional, having faked his diploma to wrangle his job.

The fakery says a lot about the level of broadcast standards in these parts (how could he have fooled his employers for so long before finally being found out?). And, how could such a dubious person have gained access to the candidate?s inner circle, despite Aquino?s presumably tight close-in security?

Again, what does this laxness say about us and the excessively laid-back way we deal with important matters?

Trouble is, the protagonist turns out to be burdened by many of the same, old melodramatic baggage we see in teleseryes. Woes wrung the nth time around are too woebegone by half, so the social fabric depicted is frayed.

To be sure, the movie?s conceit about Noy being fake and much too detached is a good totem for similarly disaffected Filipinos, and serves as an ironic contrast to the acutely sincere Noynoy Aquino.

However, the focus falters when the film shows Noy finally being affected by everything he?s witnessed on the campaign trail, which eventually persuades him to finally do the right thing for the first time in his warped existence.

This key shift is effected in less than authentic and convincing terms, so its impact is merely nominal, and Noy?s character arc is compromised.

Another problem is Noy?s coverage of Noynoy. Throughout the movie, it?s faulted by his superiors at the network for being superficial and lacking in conviction, but when Noy changes, the docu remains more or less on the same level.

We?re asked to believe that Noy has changed for the better, but little actual evidence is presented to prove it.

This is due to the fact that the filmmakers have chosen to take the facile way out and settle for their avowed intentions, rather than work harder and vivify it by way of believable action.

Finally, the film compromises its upbeat rising action after Noy has ?changed? by going on to depict one personal tragedy after another in its sad protagonist?s life.

Doubly ironic

It?s OK to say that, despite Noynoy?s earnest desire to effect change and betterment for all Filipinos, the situation is too hopeless to allow for a relatively happy ending. But why bother to trace an eventually hopeful character arc, only to shoot it down in the end? That?s doubly ironic, and much too much bile for a single ingestion.

Finally, after being so darkly cynical, hopeless and bitter, why do the film?s closing scenes show Noy?s relatives successfully crawling out of the pit that has engulfed them throughout the story?

The viewer is left feeling perplexed and serially manipulated this way and that by filmmakers who don?t seem to be all that clear about their stance on the view of life that they seek to impart.

Despite these shifting perspective and push-me/pull-you proclivities, however, we?re still glad we saw ?Noy.? But we regret the production?s failure to become the truly memorable film it could have been.