Netflix’s Filipino film, Will You Marry? follows an independent mother who travels to Copenhagen to meet her online match. However, despite the mother’s excitement, her daughter doesn’t trust the online suitor. The story unfolds to bring to light whether this is true love or just an online fluke. We slowly begin to understand why the daughter has an underlying motive for her mother’s happiness.
But the question remains why the word “me” does not exist in the title before a question mark, and that’s the tricky part about this story. The makers decided to twist the story a little and treat us with a very different perspective on the idea of marriage. This Filipino film progressively tackles the concept of marriage and tells us that marriage is not just between two people, but a whole family.
Director Veronica Velasco presents a bold and independent widow with two children, a boy, and a girl. She decides to increase her chances of finding love by trying out a dating app. The app helps her find true love, but her children refuse to accept it, especially her daughter. Without any more delay, let us understand what this widow’s story is.
‘Will You Marry?’ Synopsis: When a Lotus blossoms
Writers Aileen Kessop and Jinky Laurel come together with director and fellow writer Veronica Velasco as an all-female team to write a story that matters in real life. The production of the Will You Marry? seems to be of a stale nature, very organic, with no structured script.
The film begins with two children bickering on their mother’s birthday. We observe that the daughter, Sweet, is more grounded than her brother, Toffee. The story slowly takes us through the bold journey of a widow. She breaks the news to her immediate family that she is interested in a man who resides in Denmark. They are very apprehensive but go along with it hesitantly.
The mother, Reese, and her daughter, Sweet, leave for Denmark to meet Fritz, a good-looking Danish gentleman, and her sister, Shauna. During their stay in Fritz’s palatial house, Sweet develops suspicions about Fritz’s true intentions towards her mother. She makes up many stories to convince herself that he is not suitable for her, unknowing of the fact that she is acting on her father’s wish to protect her. While she begins this journey of understanding how to love her mother better, she falters in a significant way when Fritz finally prepares to propose to Reese. Will You Marry? then takes a turn to make Sweet realize that love is not hers to claim but comes from the acceptance of love from another.
The Review
Director Veronica Velasco depicts how a widowed woman should exist in this society without having an existential crisis. The world of these women does not come to an end after one marriage. If in the modern world we believe that love can happen twice, then why not marriage?
Like any other free individual, even widowed women should be treated equally. The film talks at length about the fact that they should be given the freedom to make their own decisions in life, and their family should support them instead of being a burden to them and pulling them into an abyss. The only thing she demands is respect and acceptance from society. With its male figures, this film inspires the future generation that both women and men can make the world a better place through love for all – married or not.
Will You Marry? is a 2021 Filipino Drama Comedy directed by Veronica Velasco. Writers Aileen Kessop and Jinky Laurel tell the story of a widow who seeks true love only to find that all of her baggage must be weighed carefully before she finally puts a ring on it with her favorite blue-eyed man.
