We’ve been hearing the word paraluman of late. For some, it’s part of the lyric for an Eraserheads classic song alluding to the immaculate beauty of a post-war screen actress. For the younger generation, it’s the title of the song popularized by a young music artist named Adie.
“Paraluman means muse, a woman with extraordinary beauty, ang babaeng pinakamaganda sa lahat,” director Yam Laranas said in a recent virtual junket that launched his latest film, Paraluman.
The award-winning thriller and horror film director is back, this time for a new romance movie starring the onscreen pairing of one of this generation’s most promising stars, Rhen Escaño, and ‘90s heartthrob Jao Mapa.
“This is not your usual romance. There is something deeper. Note that Jao’s Peter and Rhen’s Mia have a huge age gap and that Peter is actually already in a relationship. It’s thrilling. It’s exciting,” the director promised.
Laranas is more known for his award-winning thriller and horror films such as Sigaw, Aurora, and Death of a Girlfriend. With Paraluman, he traversed a road he hadn’t gone to for a long time—the romance genre. The last romance movie he directed was the 2002 blokcbuster hit Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon starring Regine Velasquez and Richard Gomez.
“I’d like to do different genres. My goal actually is to mix genres. I’ve done that in Death of a Girlfriend. Paraluman is a sexy love story, it’s not tragic. So, this is the path that I wanted to achieve,” he said.
“Paraluman is a story of a guy and a much younger woman,” he added.
In the story, Jao Mapa is Peter, a man who lives in with his partner Giselle (Gwen Garci), a barangay worker. They will meet Mia (Rhen Escaño), the younger sister of one of their friends. Not long after, Mia falls in love with Peter and before everything goes wrong, Peter must choose between Mia, who’s very much younger than him and who just came into his life very recently, or Giselle who has been with him for the longest time and wants nothing but to be with him for the rest of her life.
According to Laranas, the film tackles a relationships, which foundation is merely sex. The film wanted to answer the question 'what happens when sex is the foundation of a relationship, and a forbidden one at that.'
“It all started as a sexual attraction between the main characters. Then it became flirtation. Then it blossomed into a love affair. That’s their journey. All the scenes that contain nudity were integrated into the story. But that’s not the core of the film, it’s the journey of the characters,” the director concluded.
Paraluman streams on Vivamax on Sept. 24.