Julia Barretto: An Actress To Last

I've always known and believed that Julia Barretto is really a great actress in the making. Aside from the fact that she comes from the Barretto clan, remarkable for their acting geniuses onscreen (especially Claudine, who was a teleserye royalty for so long), she was able to show us her promise as a child star (a decade ago) when she took part of several TV series like "Walang Kapalit" and "Kokey". As a teenager, she made a successful TV comeback through her teleseryes "Mirabella" and "And I Love You So".

Yet, admittedly, there was still this sort of detachment of Julia from the casual viewers. Some thought she was too pretty to play dramatic characters. Others even had this belief that she was too "sosyal" or glam for teleserye acting.

But it was in last year's Metro Manila Film Festival when people actually started to take good notice of her maturity and versatility as an actress, thanks to her "Vince and Kath and James" performance which won her praises from the moviegoers, and even a Best Film Actress award from the 2017 Platinum Stallion Media Awards. She successfully and willingly shed off her glamorous, hard-to-reach persona, and broke those walls that might have prevented some people before from seeing who she really was as a performer and a personality. Julia proved that she can also be this simple yet lovable and endearing leading lady we can relate and connect to. Fans have even started rooting for her team-ups with Joshua Garcia and Ronnie Alonte, with whom she shared the bill in "Vince and Kath and James".

These days, we can't help but praise Julia more with her outstanding performance in the nightly top-rating serye "A Love To Last", where she plays the usually calm, understanding and kind-hearted Chloe Noble. The recent episodes of the series though have been showing Chloe's character in different dimensions: one of a young woman who has fallen in love deeply to her best friend Tupe (played by Ronnie) who is in love with someone else, and the other of that protective daughter (of Ian Veneracion's Anton) who feels betrayed after finding out that her debut party organizer Andeng (Bea Alonzo), whom she treated like an elderly sister and friend, is actually her father's girlfriend. These developments in Chloe's character are allowing Julia to show her depth and range as an "actress to last", transitioning fluidly from calm and restrained to emotionally charged.

I've collected those five scenes which I think, by far, are Julia's best in "A Love To Last", ranging from the most kilig to the most emotionally stirring. We can surely look forward to more of these kind of scenes from Julia as the serye's twists and turns are getting more gripping and compelling these days, and we have to watch out with how Chloe would deal with each of these, especially her character's debut party is coming up, which is one of the series' most awaited highlights.

1. The first time she met Tupe, which was awkward, weird and unlikely, but somewhat kilig.

2. When Chloe caught Tupe in her hotel room, maliciously thinking that he had done something to her.

3. When Chloe opens up to Anton about her feelings for Tupe. Awkward, but really touching father-daughter moment, 

4. When Tupe reads his love letter for Jenna to Chloe, which was so hurtful for Chloe. 

5. And of course, who can forget that moment when Chloe confronted Andeng for feeling so betrayed when she found out that Andeng is her father's girlfriend.