DonBelle levels up: Donny, Belle shine in darker, more mature starrer

Donny Pangilinan and Belle Mariano ditch rom-com fluff for a grittier love story—career clashes, control issues, and a twist fans won’t see coming.

If you’ve been stanning the DonBelle tandem of Donny Pangilinan and Belle Mariano since the 2021 iWant series “He’s Into Her,” you’ll be pleased to know that the romantic big-screen drama “Tayo sa Wakas,” their latest—and last—project together, is a step in the right direction as far as career trajectories go.

In “Tayo sa Wakas,” helmed by box-office director Cathy Garcia-Sampana, Donny and Belle are whisked through a checklist of adulting issues that consciously eschews rom-com sugarcoating for something darker and more mature. While the film is far from perfect, there’s no denying that the DonBelle rizz, as Gen Z would say, is off the charts in this one.

It’s hard to say much about the plot without giving away the unexpected twist that Cisco Serrano (Pangilinan) must come to terms with as he takes stock of his shaky relationship with Cheska Alegre (Mariano) after a polarizing two-year period. Theirs is a love story that begins auspiciously as officemates-turned-live-in partners who complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. 

Doing it for the clout

For the hard-driving Cisco, he isn’t just doing his best for the clout. He’s out to prove to his disapproving dad (Matthew Mendoza) and Spanish-preaching lolo (Jaime Fabregas) that there’s more to him than unrealized potential. 

But when Cheska’s career begins to take off without Cisco, it creates a problem that drives a wedge between the couple. Nothing articulates this widening gap more clearly than when Cheska refuses to let her hard-earned personal triumphs take the back seat to her increasingly controlling boyfriend. Can love withstand their differences?

We must admit that while we always look forward to the upbeat vibe and the spirited performances Garcia-Sampana consistently coaxes from her actors, we didn’t have very high expectations for “Tayo sa Wakas” because we felt that the director’s recent big-screen hits were merely formulaic crowd-drawers regurgitated from earlier movies. 

Take her 2025 film “Meet, Greet & Bye,” about a cancer-stricken mother (Maricel Soriano) whose terminal illness brings her bickering children (Joshua Garcia and Piolo Pascual as an overseas Filipino worker) together. In 2017, Sampana was also at the helm of the better-realized “Seven Sundays,” starring the late Ronaldo Valdez, cast as the father of squabbling sons (Dingdong Dantes and Aga Muhlach as an OFW) who is given only two months to live after he’s diagnosed with lung cancer. Need we ask if you noticed the similarities?

Sampana was also the director behind Kathryn Bernardo and Alden Richards’ Canada-set blockbuster “Hello, Love, Again,” released in November 2024. But two months before that film’s release, we also saw Benedict Mique’s similar take on the Filipino diaspora, “Maple Leaf Dreams,” about a couple (the compelling Kira Balinger, LA Santos) who realizes that the lives of OFWs in Canada isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Filipino film buffs consume too many films that are just tired variations of the same themes. 

For its part, while it has a lot of familiar elements in its story, “Tayo sa Wakas” offers a refreshing twist in its denouement, giving Donny and Belle a solid resource to draw from. In fact, we were shookt when we finally realized how this “twist” explains what initially seemed like a questionable storytelling choice at the start of the film.

As the story skips through the different periods in the characters’ lives, Sampana keeps things on an even keel by presenting mandatory rom-com elements in dynamic ways, including kooky friends who help leaven melodramatic excesses (Joross Gamboa), go-getting rivals and third wheels (River Joseph), silly wigs with a life of their own, resolute editing courtesy of the ever-reliable Marya Ignacio, and JK Labajo’s earnest cover of “Hanggang” playing judiciously in the background.

In their finest portrayals to date, Donny and Belle acquit themselves well in the production’s emotionally charged confrontations and epiphanies, with Cisco stiff-arming away his grief in denial and Cheska immersing herself in hers.

Dramatic sequences staged with care

Unfortunately, while their dramatic sequences are staged with care and believability, the movie as a whole lacks a singular dramatic moment that lingers with you long after the credits roll—except perhaps that exhilarating last frame. 

Sampana may have given her young actors a measure of proficiency, but there are dramatic scenes that need more than just competence, effective blocking or proper pacing. Some require lived-in experience and, more importantly, gravitas—think Jericho Rosales, John Lloyd Cruz, Angelica Panganiban, Bea Alonzo or Dennis Trillo—to vivify emotions that no risable dialogue can fully express.

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