Are you on the hunt for a dramatic romance story that not only causes your heart to beat like crazy but also one that keeps you guessing how the end will turn out? Then this new Philippines romance story might be the one for you. Make sure to read till the end as we tell you all about Love You Long Time, along with its ending explained.
Directed by JP Habac, the movie is a romance drama that follows the story of lovers from different timelines. The only way for them to communicate is through two-way radios. We are sure that just this brief is enough to make one wonder how the two will end up together if they will at all.
The movie has actor Carlo Aquino in the role of Uly and Eisel Serrano in the role of Ikay, who happens to be a romance writer. While these two are the main leads in the story, we also have a small supporting cast, including Ana Abad Santos, Meanne Espinosa, Juan Miguel Severo, Arlene Muhlach, and Patrick Quiroz.
The movie is said to have been set in Baguio and Atok, Benguet, Philippines, and is written by screenplay writer Gena Tenaja. Let us quickly get into the story of Ikay, a heartbroken writer who stumbles upon a two-way radio only to accidentally connect with a possible love of her life from a different timeline.
Love You Long Time Ending Explained
The story introduces us to Ikay, an aspiring romance screenplay writer who works hard and does her best in life. Her writings always impress people, and she is the best at her job. She has the imagination and the creativity required by a writer and refuses to change things even a little bit.
Her work has a personal touch, and she does not plan on giving it up at all. For her, the scripts that she writes are like an outlet of expression for her thoughts and feelings. It is a collection of her life, and she cannot betray that. While she works extremely hard and tries her best to keep her scripts authentic and real, her boss, Denzel, realizes that she might be pushing herself a bit too much.
Ikay is a devoted worker who might be a little obsessed with her job, and not wanting Ikay to drain herself too much, Denzel, after recognizing her hard work, suggests to her that she should consider taking a break. Denzel recommends taking a vacation that would probably help her get a newer, fresher perspective on things.
An Innocent Break
Ikay jumps on the opportunity and decides it best to visit her aunt Mench and sister Bituin, both of whom live in Quezon City. The hardworking and committed Ikay must have been suffering in silence because upon reaching her aunt’s place, we find in one of the scenes Aunt Mench talking to Ikay and giving her important advice about life.
She is clearly a wise and strong woman who has lived a full life. She tells Ikay that while it is okay to work hard and be successful, it is just as important to spend time away from work and indulge in yourself so that you do not lose hold of yourself. She tells her about happiness and how it should not be completely dependent on material things.
This talk of self-love and the search for happiness is empowering not just for Ikay but for anybody who is listening, including the audience. Ikay resolves to find happiness for herself, but it turns out it is easier said than done.
She struggles not just with her happiness but also with her work. She had planned on trying to change her environment in hopes of working better, but as it turned out, she was not even able to come up with the inspiration to write, let alone actually write something.
We soon realize that she might be going through a writer’s creative block, which explains why even coming up with new ideas for a story was exhausting and hard for her. And it is while she was struggling to find new ideas that came across an old, discarded walkie-talkie. Realizing that it must be her aunt’s, she initially thinks nothing of it.
A Man From Where?
Just as she was about to put it away, she heard a sound coming from it, which obviously raised her curiosity. She starts communicating with the voice, which we find clearly belongs to a man, and realizes that the person she is talking to is a guy named Uly from a place called Atok.
It is the words she shares with Uly that bring Ikay’s motivation back. Their conversations end up becoming the source of her happiness, making her feel better about herself again. Her creative block seems to disappear, and she feels like writing once again.
She realizes that she has a lot in common with Uly. His fixation on fixing broken things rather than just throwing them away and valuing things that other people must have made with so much heart resonates with her, and it also ends up firing her productivity more. She feels understood and happy once again.
Finding each other’s words comforting, the two decide to finally meet with each other. They decide to meet at a church, with Uly telling Ikay that he will be wearing a white shirt while waiting for her. Ikay finds a man in the church who also has a white shirt on, but as Ikay is about to approach him, it hits her that this is the man with whom she had gotten into an accident when she first entered the city.
Ikay does not feel that good about the situation and decides it best to run away. The two clear the misunderstanding and once again decide to meet, this time at a restaurant on Valentine’s Day. As the day comes, another weird incident happens where the restaurant lets Ikay enter, but Uly reveals that it had been booked completely by someone else, so no one could enter.
It confuses and frustrates the two, and Uly decides to ask a stranger what date it was. The lady tells him that it was indeed 14 February, but in 2018, and for Ikay, it was 2022.
Though Ikay initially refuses to believe Uly’s words, he tries his best to convince her that this is not a prank. She tries to look for Uly on social media and even tries the number he gave her, but nothing except the walkie-talkie is able to connect her to him.
Uly’s Story
The two try to meet again and continue their attempts to communicate through social media in hopes of breaking the barrier of time that is separating them but to no avail. We are told that the two physically exist close to each other, visit the same places, and that others can see them both on social media, but it is just them who miss each other by a mark.
Ikay finally feels like returning to work but soon finds that Uly has been suffering from cancer and is taking chemotherapy to get slightly better. Devasted by this piece of news, she travels to Atok to see him in person, only to find that he has moved to Manila. Against all odds, Ikay flies all the way to Manila in order to see him.
Ikay remembers that in 2018, she had met with her aunt in Manila to celebrate her birthday, and on knowing this, Uly travels to the spot where she must have met with her aunt. Thankfully, he manages to catch a glimpse of her, finally seeing her for the first time. Knowing that they met, Ikay feels content even in 2022.
Just as we think that the two had their happy ending, the makers shift the mood of the movie and do a complete one-eighty. We are told that Ikay’s accident with the guy from the church when she had first come to meet her aunt had actually been really serious and had put her in a state of coma.
The End Explained
Uly was not a guy from the past, but the guy she broke with at the start of the movie, and he was by her bedside, reading a script that Ikay had been working on.
So, their talking through a two-way radio was all a part of the script with major inspiration from her actual love story with the real-life Uly. In the script, Uly and Ikay’s story would have ended with the breakup, which took place at the start of the movie in real life.
But in the script, Ikay had tweaked a few things, and instead of a bad breakup, she had written a scene where when Uly asks for her hand in marriage, instead of saying no, she tells him how much she loved him but that she did not want to get married just yet considering they are both young and she has things planned for her career in the future.
The added scene would end with Ikay promising to find him and marry him when she felt the time was right and she was ready for it. All of this was mentioned in the script, which Uly read with Ikay in bed in a coma.
Finally, understanding what the real reason for their break up was, he feels emotional, and the movie comes to an end. Clearly, Ikay managed to convey her thoughts and feelings to the person she loved the most with the help of her work, but whether the future she had planned for them in the script turns into a reality or not remains unanswered.
The way Ikay’s character was introduced at the start turns out to be completely true as she manages to beautifully wrap her thoughts and sentiments and pour it all into her work to convey to the right person.
While the ending may bum some people out who were hoping for the story of Uly and Ikay from the script to be the actual one, this one feels just as emotional and thought-provoking, so make sure to check Love You Long Time out.
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