The coldest day of the year, I believe, has never been Christmas. Yes, despite the fake snow and styrofoam snowmen scattered everywhere, Christmas in the Philippines has been relatively warm, especially in the past few years. For me, the coldest day is that which happens as the melting ice in Siberia sends the chilly winds blowing in the direction of our islands during the first quarter of the year, just weeks before summer brings its scorching heat upon us. Usually, for some of us, temperatures are at their most biting every February 14--Valentine's Day. 

It was in high school when I first realized this fact. Being an unkempt and aloof fourteen-year old, Valentine’s Day for me meant going straight home from school while my friends went to McDo or Jollibee to have sundaes and fries with current or potential boyfriends. 

It also meant curling up on the sofa beside my mother in front of the TV to watch soap operas or old movies while restaurants and hotels everywhere filled up with starry-eyed and slow-moving couples. Back then, my mother was just beginning to get used to being single after calling it quits with my father. 

I remember clearly the way we were, my mother and I—a thirty-something and a teenager, one burnt by love and one eagerly waiting to be set aflame—date-less but not love-less as we fell in love, again and again, and in different ways, with the romances that unfolded on our television screen.

We found ourselves fascinated with the so-called love teams, and like many other Pinoys we couldn’t help but ask ourselves, as the closing credits rolled: “Nagkatuluyan / magkakatuluyan kaya talaga sila? (Did they / will they really end up together?)” or “Totohanan kaya talaga yung kissing scene nila? (Was their kissing scene for real?)” 

Of course, for some tandems, the romantic screen story does not manage to cross over to the realm of the real. Rogelio de la Rosa and Carmen Rosales, for instance, were the box-office king and queen back in the late thirties to the early fifties, but they did not end up together. Still, they kept their fans fascinated with the beautiful music the made together in movies like Maalaala Mo Kaya (1954), where Rogelio plays the part of a musical composer and Carmen is his muse, a singer. 

After doing her laundry, Carmen sits beside Rogelio to help him compose his new song. When he hands her the scrap of paper with the lyrics of his new song, the melody seems to come to them as naturally as breath, as under the mango tree they begin to sing of their difficult yet enduring love:

Huwag mong sabihing ikaw’y hamak 

Kahit na isang mahirap 

Pagkat ang tangi kong pag-ibig 

Ganyan ang hinahanap 

Aanhin ko ang kayamanan 

Kung ang puso’y salawahan 

Nais ko’y pag-ibig na tunay 

At walang kamatayan 

Maalaala mo kaya 

Ang sumpa mo sa akin 

Na ang pag-ibig mo ay 

Sadyang di magmamaliw 

Kung nais mong matanto 

Buksan ang aking puso 

At tanging larawan mo 

Ang doo’y nakatago. 

Although I was not yet born in the fifties, I am sure that the fact that Rogelio and Carmen had their own respective partners did not stop fans from hoping that they would someday, somehow, fall in love—and this was kept them watching the films of this legendary screen couple.

One of the things I’ve learned by writing for the mainstream cinema is that we Filipinos seem to like watching two stories at the same time. The first story is where the fictional characters in the soap or movie meet and fall in love and end up together. The second story—the more important one—is the one where they see the actors getting carried away by the roles they play and fall in love for real, or they manage to portray the roles so realistically because they are truly, redundantly in love. 

It is not enough, it seems, that characters are played charmingly enough, or that romantic conflicts are resolved convincingly enough. We want to believe that what made us kilig and cry is not the creation of some unknown scriptwriter or director. We want our own falling-in-love experience while watching the movie or teledrama to be the reflection of a real love, as if by simply watching the love team onscreen we are able to get an intimate sense of the real relationship between these people we know and care about. 

I think this is why the “love teams” or tandems themselves have fan clubs that are different from the fan clubs for the individual celebrities. By “different,” I mean that these love team fan clubs have a different set of members, a different set of club officers, a different tarpaulin—in short, a different identity. They are fans, not so much of the thespian talents of both celebrities involved, but of the love that they represent.

One unforgettable love was that of Guy and Pip. Unlike Rogelio and Carmen, the team-up between Nora Aunor (Guy) and Tirso Cruz III (Pip) actually developed into a relationship, and this was one of the reasons that made the love team a hysterical success. Another reason was the appeal of the unique pairing of a mestizo guy with a morena girl. 

When Pip gave Guy a doll as a present, the doll became known as Maria Leonora Theresa (MLT). The doll’s name is a combination of Nora’s real name, Maria Leonora, and a feminized version of Tirso, Theresa. Not only did MLT become a symbol of the love between Guy and Pip, but she was also treated as if it were the couple’s real daughter. It even inspired a movie, and a song. 

I remember that scene in the park where Pip begs Guy for a kiss. Teasing him, Guy makes him close his eyes, and she offers the doll’s lips instead. They laugh and walk around the park like a real family. Meanwhile the song plays in the background: 

Maria Leonora Theresa,

my gift to you

She was a doll and lasting symbol

of my love so true

When the romance between Guy and Pip died, Guy returned MLT to Pip—just like it says in the song, whose lyrics are said to have been composed by Tirso himself:

Maria Leonora Theresa 

now she is blue

She knows that you have found a new love

and she’s been crying, too.

Maria Leonora Theresa,

forsaken doll

Now that you’ve returned her to me

love has died for Maria and me.

Maria Leonora Theresa became the most famous doll in the Philippines in the seventies. She was so real she received expensive gifts, fan mail, went on national tours, wrote editorials, and even collected relief money for typhoon victims. I think it was not simply because of Guy and Pip’s incredible fame, but it was also because MLT also represented our dream of family—of an unselfish and unconditional love. 

Also during the height of Guy and Pip’s fame, the Vilma Santos and Bobot Mortiz love team also prospered. The Bobot-Vi love team exemplified the innocence of young love, especially in their 1972 film, Sixteen. As the movie’s theme song goes:

Kissing on the park

Hugging on the boat

Holding hand in hand

Down the avenue

Strolling down the lane

With castles in the air

A kissin’, a lovin’

A kissin’, a lovin’

A kissin’ all night long

They say I’m only Sweet Sixteen

I’ve never been kissed

I’ve never been loved

And all I want is candy

Ice cream, teddy bear, and lollipop

As the fame of the love teams rose, fights between Guy-Pip and Bobot-Vi fans would erupt as if the future of these screen loves depended on public clamor.

Even today, many fervent fan club members would put up websites and participate in discussion forums lobbying for the teamed-up personalities to end up together. Just like in the seventies, members of different love team fan clubs would still argue with one another just to prove which tandem has the better chemistry, whether on or off the screen. 

Another memorable love team is that of Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion. Their love story started with the movie Dear Heart, whose theme song also seems to tell us about Sharon’s dilemma at that time when she decided to marry Gabby at the age of eighteen: 

Dear heart, ikaw raw ay batang-bata pa

At di mo pa kayang mag-isa

Sa bawat kaba alam ba nila

Ang pag-ibig mong nadarama

Di ka binigyan ng layang magmahal

Sa batang katulad mo ito’y bawal

Balang araw magugulat ang lahat

Ikaw pala’y di na isang bata, dear heart

Like Guy and Pip, the reel became real for Sharon and Gabby, but again, the relationship between them did not last. At present, although the Sharon is married to Sen. Kiko Pangilinan, fans—including myself—still continue to hope for a reunion movie for Sharon-Gabby. In fact, when we were working on Caregiver in 2007, as a Sharon-Gabby fan I had wished that Gabby would play the part of Sharon’s husband. Of course, Sharon would not hear of it because, as she had once said in an interview, there was no real closure between them. 

Many love teams have come and go, but there are those whose appeal continues to persist. Kristine Hermosa and Jericho Rosales’s primetime soap, Dahil May Isang Ikaw, for instance, continues to enjoy good ratings, and so does the afternoon series of Mark Herras and Jennylyn Mercado, Ikaw Sana. This is despite the fact that both pairs had been real lovers that parted ways for some reason.

Personally, I would love to see a more mature romance starring Piolo Pascual and Judy Ann Santos or one with Aga Muhlach and Lea Salonga, because I’ve seen all of their movies together and enjoyed all of them. 

I used to think that having a romance movie marathon with my mother was a depressing way to spend Valentine’s. Now, looking back, I realize it wasn’t so bad. In some ways it was better, for instance, than waiting thirty minutes just to get a table at a crowded restaurant or enduring the Valentine traffic, like what happened during my first Valentine date. 

Looking at the stories of my favorite love teams, I notice now how most of them did not live their cinematic happy endings. I only know of Fernando Poe Jr. and Susan Roces whose onscreen love team and the subsequent marriage remained strong until FPJ’s death in 2004. Even then, we know that their lives were not as perfect as you would expect a happy ending to be. Still, we continue to dream for them, because it is another way of dreaming for ourselves. As the movie theme song goes, “Bakit di na lang totohanin ang lahat?” 

Oh, how we wish.

Although their relationships did not last, the great loves of the love teams in their films continue to endure. Replay after replay, they meet by chance, they argue over something petty, they compromise, they kiss, and one unguarded moment they fall in love as the theme song swells in the background but then they lose each other one rainy night, because it is a harsh world for lovers, only to find each other again—and fall in love, again, and again, and again. 

Year after year, we keep on watching them, celebrating our own lost loves, almost happy that, at one point, in some way, it was real. -end-