NO doubt filmmaker-scriptwriter Jun Lana made cinema aficionados take notice of him when his movie Die Beautiful was released in 2016.
The film, which premiered at the 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival, gave Lana and his team priceless accolades and brought them to various festivals overseas. It’s lead star, Paolo Ballesteros, hit instant fame and even took home international honors. Ballesteros was accorded the Best Actor plum at the A-list Tokyo International Film Festival, and he also bagged a special jury prize for acting at the 2016 Kerala International Film Festival in India.
The overwhelming success of the movie inspired Lana, his partner Perci Intalan, and their team at IdeaFirst Co. to produce a sequel to the movie, and they called it Born Beautiful. It was supposed to be headlined by Christian Bables, who also scored many acting victories for his performance in Die Beautiful, but conflicts and personal decisions put the project to a halt and prompted the producers to look for a replacement for Bables.
The search was not easy but the lead role fell into the lap of Martin del Rosario, who is not new in essaying gay characters. Del Rosario had already won a prestigious Urian best supporting actor trophy for his closet gay character in Giancarlo Abrahan’s debut feature film Dagitab in 2014.
Del Rosario, who started his television career in ABS-CBN before jumping to GMA in 2014, has also given life to many colorful gender-bending roles on television, so such a character is not entirely new to him. Constant rumors about his true sexual orientation have been hounding him for many years now, and he said that he has gotten used to all these and he has learned to just shrug off the talks and not waste any of his time to react to these allegations. His not being linked to any female coactor all these years have furthered fueled the flames, but he simply does not care. Talks like these have resurfaced, reignited as promotions of his current gay-themed movie kicks into high gear.
He has also courted a lot of controversies in the 11 years that he has been in show business. But he has learned to keep silent rather than put up a defensive stance. “Less is always more,” he intoned, adding, “The less you talk, the less mistakes you make. People will think whatever they’d like to think, and I cannot control that.”
Del Rosario is proud of the work that he has done in Born Beautiful. “Aside from the movie, there’s also a cable series which we painstakingly worked on for almost half a year,” he shared.
He was not only made to look like a real transgender in the movie but he also engaged in sensual scenes with not one, but two leading men: Akihiro Blanco and Kiko Matos. These scenes are being hyped to market the movie, which we hope will help lure the crowds to watch the movie when it opens this week.
The tandem of Lana and Intalan has been tested time and again, and the quality of their works continue to improve with every new project. That’s why we are quite confident that Born Beautiful will be another winner.
We learned that they are currently wrapping up work for another good material, titled Son of God, and the partners (both in real life and in business) are also preparing to pitch another new project titled Between Sea and Sky at the 2019 Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum in mid-March.
But for the meantime, their efforts are all being channeled to make sure that Born Beautiful will duplicate the success of the original film, and that the movie will give a new lease on the careers of Martin del Rosario and his coactors.