‘There is no recipe:’ Irene Villamor on the science of heartbreak in ‘The Loved One’  

Heartbreak has no formula: Irene Villamor reveals how real love shapes “The Loved One.”

For “The Loved One” director Irene Emma Villamor, understanding human experience isn’t a formula; it comes from observing people and their relationships.

“Wala namang recipe — it’s just the human condition. I think [sa] pag-o-observe [ng] human experience, it’s not like a formula, but it’s really the observation ng tao, ng mga relasyon,” the director revealed in an interview with radar Entertainment.

The concept for “The Loved One” started around 2018, Villamor noted, when she felt exhausted with themes of “brief encounters,” wanting to explore the ins-and-outs of long term relationships.

Inside the creative process of “The Loved One”

Villamor’s storytelling remains rooted in plain attention to how people interact and function in the real world through their relations. This emphasizes how film is a vessel to elaborate how pain comes from reality, not a manufactured script or wound up, invisible strings.

An architect of modern cinematic heartbreak in films like “Meet Me In St. Gallen,” “Only We Know,” and “Sid & Aya: Not A Love Story,” Villamor returns to a genre she’s carefully concocted throughout her career as a director, to which she admits having brewed this newly-released project since 2018.