It’s hard to tell what exactly Noy is supposed to be. It mashes together real footage taken from the Aquino campaign with an overwrought melodrama set in a flood stricken home. Stuck between these two extremes, the film flagellates wildly as it scrambles to find some sort of meaning in its images. Noy ends up feeling didactic despite having so little to say, an entire world of drama dropped on the characters in place of any meaningful exploration.
Noy (Coco Martin), a poor young man faced with the prospect of taking care of his family, fakes his way into a job at a TV station. With a fake diploma and demo reel, he takes a journalist position and starts working on a documentary on the rise of Sen. Noynoy Aquino. He takes flack for his amateurish work, but his new career also opens many doors for him. But as he moves forward in his work, he finds problems piling up at home, in a place where the hope of the election can’t seem to reach.
The connection between the fiction and non-fiction parts of the film is tenuous at best, one side really having little to do with the other. But that wouldn’t be such a problem is these two sides were independently interesting. The documentary part of the film doesn’t really dive very deep into the campaign, offering little insight into the overall phenomenon that was Noynoy Aquino’s candidacy. In its weakest moment, the film simply has a parade of recognizable faces voicing their support for the senator, making largely unsubstantiated claims about what the senator stands for. The film seems to have had access to more candid moments in the campaign, but little is made of it all. In the metafictional side of the film, Noy’s editor tells him that his documentary lacks a point of view, that it doesn’t seem to have anything to say. The criticism holds true to the end of the picture, despite scenes where Noy’s work is praised.
But as tepid as the non-fiction, I would take whole hours more of it in place of the film’s fiction. The poorly constructed drama seems to throw serious problems at the characters at random, giving them something to brood about in place of actual emotional growth. The screenplay tries to lay the seeds for these problems early on, but the sheer disconnectedness of the conflicts leaves the script dangling in the wind. In quick succession, a foreign boyfriend causes trouble in their home, a girlfriend makes a dramatic ultimatum, Noy’s brother falls into dealing drugs, and his sister is suddenly struck blind. Juxtaposed against the very real footage of the campaign, the artificiality of the drama is only made clearer.
There’s some valiant thinking present in the film, but it all just gets buried under the weight of its conceit. Freed from either side of the film, each element might have worked better, given the time to really explore its own machinations. Performances are good enough, though again, their effect is limited by the dual nature of the film. Coco Martin, Cherry Pie Picache, and this generally solid cast hit the drama notes pretty high. Only Baron Geisler manages to underplay his role, playing an editor with a seen-it-all vibe that might’ve been worth exploring a little more.
Noy ends in a confused tone, blunting the edge of a tragedy with a rapid succession of happy scenes, depicting a happier future for some of the characters, presumably under the reign of the new president. This rapid shifting of tones underlines the film’s general inability to nail down a tone, to stick to its guns and say anything that actually matters. As it is, it feels like a series of echoes, things already covered in the news, and in many melodramas past. A valiant effort all around, but hardly a film worth watching.
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