A few years later, Betty is now retired. She spends her days doing ordinary things like painting, grocery shopping, and cooking for herself. Occasionally, her best friend Cora (Shamaine Buencamino) and Cora’s husband, Bert (Joel Saracho), visits her. During these visits, Cora often tries to set Betty up on dates. Unfortunately, none of them work out. The men she introduces to her are either perverts or too old.
Betty used to be married; his name is William (Al Tantay). No, he’s not dead. He simply left her for someone younger. Despite this, Betty and William remain in contact. Their relationship now feels more like a polite friendship. There’s no drama and you can just sense that there's acceptance on what happened between them.
Across the street from Betty lives Ryan (Dingdong Dantes), a middle-aged man who lost his wife a year ago. He’s still grieving and unwilling to move on. He refuses to date anyone and spends most of his evenings drinking alone. Though they live near each other, Ryan and Betty rarely interact.
That changes one day when Betty asks Ryan to host dinner for the two of them after he helps her with something around the house. Ryan hesitates but agrees. What starts as a simple gesture becomes the beginning of an unexpected and intimate friendship.
As they spend more time together, Betty and Ryan discover that they share more than just proximity. Both carry emotional wounds and unspoken sadness. Through long talks, quiet dinners, and everyday companionship, their bond grows stronger.
Together, they create something undefined. A relationship only they know.
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The opening of this film is one of the most random things I’ve seen. For a while, it doesn’t make much sense. But eventually, the pieces begin to fall into place. In hindsight, it actually works as a kind of spoiler as it quietly tells us that nothing big will happen in this film. We can root for these two people, but Only We Know will not bend to expectation. We can hope for something more, pine during moments of tenderness and connection, but ultimately, what we think might happen will never happen.
And that’s kind of the point.
When you step out of the theater and think about it, there are no huge turning points, no explosive reveals in this film despite the subject matter. Even the emotional climax, what could have been a scene overloaded with melodrama, was instead handled with calmness and restraint. There’s a moment when Ryan panics, but both he and Betty approach it by sitting down and processing it. No tears. Just two adults talking maturely and rationally.
I think that’s part of this film’s charm. Only We Know is a deeply adult film, not because of its themes, but because of how it treats emotion. It doesn’t rush to tell you how to feel. It doesn’t indulge in theatrics. It lets its characters be human. And in doing so, it portrays something rarely seen in Filipino movies: emotional honesty.
At its core, Only We Know explores loneliness and grief. The film makes it clear that simply being with someone does not make the pain go away. But it helps. It slows things down. It makes it easier to breathe. I love that the story does not rush the healing process for both of them. It gives its characters time. Grief and loneliness might stay with us for the long run, but it feels a lot lighter when shared.
What makes this film truly special is the way it portrays love. It is not quite romantic, and not quite platonic in the usual sense either. Yes, they call it friendship, but I think the film refuses to define it completely. Perhaps, it is saying that some human connections cannot be boxed in. Betty and Ryan share something sacred, something they do not even try to explain to others. They do not need to anyway. It is enough that they understand it.
Only We Know is an experience. It’s mundane. It’s just two people having dinner. But within those simple moments lies something much deeper. It is a quiet reflection on mortality, on grief, on what it means to be alive. And more importantly, it is a gentle celebration of the fleeting, beautiful connections that bring meaning to our lives.
It is slow, tender, and deeply honest. It trusts the audience to feel without being told what to feel. And in that trust, it becomes something precious and rare. A film that speaks to the adult heart, and reminds us that even the smallest shared moments can carry the most weight.
4/5
