De Leon’s madcap comedy is a delirious genre-bending piece that sees Japanese yakuza and Chinese gangsters cross paths with a group of Filipino youth caught up in a drug syndicate.
Review #2,592
Dir. Mike De Leon
1980 | Philippines | Comedy, Crime | 104 min | 1.85:1 | Tagalog, English & Japanese
NC16 (passed clean) for brief sexual scene
Cast: Christopher de Leon, Charo Santos-Concio, Jay Ilagan
Plot: In a spoof on the contemporary sacred cons, two yuppy couples get entangled with warring smugglers of dope that include fake priests and nuns as well as Japanese and Chinese agents.
Awards: –
Source: ABS-CBN Entertainment
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Light – Drug Syndicate; Unintended Consequences; Cultural Spoof
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Mainstream
Viewed: Screener (as part of Asian Film Archive’s Mike De Leon retrospective)
Spoilers: No
For more info on the Mike De Leon retrospective in Singapore:
https://asianfilmarchive.org/event-calendar/retrospective-mike-de-leon/
Although Will Your Heart Beat Faster? works as a companion piece to Mike De Leon’s earlier Moments in a Stolen Dream (1977), it couldn’t have been more different in approach to genre filmmaking.
Instead of the saccharine romance drama that Moments was, De Leon gives us probably his most madcap film, a delirious comedy for the ages as far as Philippine commercial cinema of the 1980s is concerned.
Will Your Heart Beat Faster? is not just a comedy but a genre-bending work with elements of action, crime and suspense, and even turns into an absurd musical at one point.
Perhaps what is most striking about the film is De Leon’s handling of tone, which could easily have been relegated to B-movie fodder even if it is inspired by the very same campiness and ridiculousness.
“This cassette has given us nothing but trouble.”
Everyone’s after a special cassette tape, after a Japanese yakuza member places it in a young man’s pocket in a bid to escape detection at the customs. This young man, played by Christopher De Leon, and his group of friends-cum-lovers, become implicated in a drug syndicate and must find a way to make sense of things.
Hilarious threats come in the form of not only the Japanese yakuza but also Chinese gangsters who seem to also want a piece of the Filipino pie, whatever that is.
Highly entertaining and not meant to be taken seriously, Will Your Heart Beat Faster?, however, does attempt to say something about how the Philippines need to try to stand firm in the face of outside forces hoping to control its economy and identity.
Adding fuel to fire, for much of the film, De Leon also relies on a subplot of fake priests and nuns—well, even the Catholic Church can’t escape being indicted in this wild fracas.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 
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