Halik sa Hangin

Plot

A few months before Mia (Julia Montes) turns 18, her father (Jett Pangan) dies. She goes to Baguio City to live with her mother (Ina Raymundo), her stepfather (Edu Manzano), and her half-brother (Miguel Vergara). Mia misses her father terribly that she finds it hard to fit into her new home, despite her mother’s sympathetic efforts and her half-brother’s irresistible cuteness. Good thing, Mia seems to be friendly enough to have made new pals, like Alvin Paredes (JC de Vera), who, it turns out, sees her as more than a friend.

Then Mia meets a mysterious young man who suddenly appears and disappears; and he’s always dressed in black leather jacket over white shirt, scarf, and denim pants whom she gets to know as Gio Brauner (Gerald Anderson). Mia is smitten by Gio’s romantic gestures and protective ways. He teaches her to play the guitar, and brings her roses, and he even rescues her from bad guys, and helps her overcome her fears. She feels she has found in Gio her knight in shining armor who will rescue her from her incurable loneliness and deathly sadness.

But Mia’s family and friends are alarmed that she has become secluded and deluded in her own imaginary world. In the end, she has to decide what matters most to her and where her heart truly is.

Cast

Filming

It is set and filmed in Baguio. According to director Emmanuel Quindo Palo in picking Baguio City as the movie's setting, he describe Baguio as overpopulated but no one can ever question the city's picturesque landscape which serves as an eye-candy for those watching Halik sa Hangin. Several scenes from the film were also shot in a 1930s abandoned American house and at the supposedly haunted Diplomat Hotel, both located in Baguio City.

Critical response

The Filipino Scribe gave the film a rate of 3.5 out of 5.0 praising Manzano and Raymundo for their performances, saying, “Edu Manzano and Ina Raymundo only had limited exposure in the movie, but they portrayed their respective roles as a loving mom and a strict but perpetually-concerned stepfather rather convincingly.”

Jocelyn Valle of PEP.ph commended Montes' performance, stating, "Julia, the actress, shows great commitment and earnestness in playing the character of Mia. She makes the viewer feel Mia’s emotional stages of entering into the territory of romantic love — apprehension, excitement, caution, bliss — until reality bites. She shines the brightest in the pivotal scene where Mia is suspected to becoming a mental case, and Mia has to convince everybody that she’s telling the truth."