The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
From among the past romances of Coco Martin, the one that is memorable for him and has remained just as impactful to the public is his love affair with award-winning actress Katherine Luna.
It is because at the time Coco was still very young and restless who wanted to make the most of it in love and career.
The Coco-Katherine love affair was so controversial especially when he was pinpointed and everyone was looking his way as the father of her first-born daughter, an attribution later retracted not only by her but the negative results of a DNA test would prove otherwise.
Martin and Luna met and fell in love with each other eventually on the set of the would-be prizewinning film by Brillante Ma. Mendoza, “Masahista (The Masseur)” (2005).
The film gave Coco the international attention and would render him a series of world renowned arthouses that brought him to national adulation when ABS-CBN noticed him and groomed him to become one of its prized possessions.
Luna, on the other hand, was earlier simultaneously proclaimed as Best Actress in 2004 at the Cinemanila International Film Festival, Young Critics Circle (YCC) and Cine Fan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema for Entertainment Warehouse’s “Babae sa Breakwater” directed by Mario O’Hara.
Katherine is the past.
Julia Montes is the present.
Julia and Coco met each other at the axis of ABS-CBN broadcast empire.
They didn’t easily fall in love with each other.
No whirlwind romance here but a gradual, gentle persuasion.
One of the TV dramas they starred in together was “Ikaw Lang.”
At the time that they were paired off in the film “Padre de Pamilya” with Superstar Nora Aunor, there were already loud whispers that the young actress and the budding action star were dancing to sweet music together but it was kept under wraps.
On the outset, Julia was the perfect picture of the pure and unchaste lady who has just turned eighteen.
Persistent rumors continued to fill the air, though, of their private liaison but the couple was tacit enough to display it without denying or confirming.
Coco and Julia’s tryst was very discreet even with the presence of an infant in the latter’s company and later on, between the two.
Until Martin and Montes came out in public sweetly, gazing fondly with each other, holding hands and sharing intimate moments together sans public admission.
A formidable relationship has indeed transpired between the lovers that no one seems to set them apart.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating when Katherine recently reemerged from the scene off-stage.
Luna faced up with newscaster and vlogger Julius Babao and told the whole world she was hooked into drugs, nabbed and jailed, got an eye infection that impaired her vision, promised self-reshaping and apologized to Coco for misrepresenting him as dad of her child for which the actor readily accepted and proclaimed: “Matagal na kitang pinatawad (I’ve forgiven you a long time ago),” exclaimed the “Batang Quiapo” hero.
He made sure to assist her in eye surgery and to cast her in his highly rated ABS-CBN action caper.
What was heartwarming and adorable was Julia’s initiative to personally accompany to the hospital the former sweetheart of the man in her life.
She was the one who reminded Katherine of her appointment with the ophthalmologist and a constant caller of Coco’s ex-flame.
Magnanimous, indeed.