Leonor Will Never Die

Ang Pagbabalik ng Kwago

VERDICT: Martika Ramirez Escobar’s audacious first feature is a maniacally meta love letter to Philippine cinema, but its films-within-a-film structure and nods to wildly different genres suffer from the lack of a substantial story.

Treat your first film as if it’s your last – that’s one ageless edict Martika Ramirez Escobar has certainly taken to heart. The 29-year-old Philippine filmmaker has packed her first feature with high-octane fistfights, family melodrama, and even a Jacques Demy-like song-and-dance sequence peppered with references to Xavier Dolan and Spike Jonze.

And then there’s the meta factor. If the premise of a screenwriter jumping into her own story to denounce the villain she helped create sounds merely Kaufman-esque, just wait until Ramirez Escobar appears as herself on screen, talking to her (real-life) editor Lawrence Ang about how to bring the whole story to a close. Simple this debut isn’t.

Having spent four years developing the project and then another four bringing it to fruition, Ramirez Escobar has allowed her instincts and passion to run wild in Leonor Will Never Die. Revolving around a washed-up screenwriter’s increasingly fantastical quest to complete a script she has left unfinished for years, this audacious debut could be seen as a rollercoaster tribute to the good, the bad and the ugly of Philippine cinema.

Those who are well-versed in Pinoy movies, especially the low-budget pito-pito flicks that propped up the country’s bustling film industry in the 1980s and 1990s, might tease some fun out of the knowing references. The cast – especially veteran thespian Sheila Francisco as the titular character – offer sufficiently calibrated performances to hit the varied notes required by the different styles.

It may be a struggle to convince the uninitiated to engage with the film’s messy structure and undercooked story, but the experiment could find new converts at Sundance, where it bowed (online) in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. While not exactly a finished item, the film has a boldness that should mark Ramirez Escobar as a name to remember among young Philippine filmmakers who have an eye for both the mainstream and the arthouse.

Leonor begins with a film playing on TV, a trashy action flick in which the hero battles a villainous mayor seeking to rid society of its “vermin”. It’s easy to think of this as some kind of pointed allegory about the Philippines’ notoriously foul-mouthed and trigger-happy incumbent president Rodrigo Duterte, but Leonor is not that kind of movie. Rather, it’s simply a film – or shall we say, the film – that’s in constant rotation at Leonor’s place, as she whiles her time away rewatching the movies she helped write. Now in her seventies and divorced, she only has her memories for company, leaving her son Rudy (Bong Cabrera) exasperated and tired of picking up her pieces and bills.

Chancing upon a newspaper ad that promises to turn stories into movies, Leonor begins to get her act together for one final crack at glory. What eventually gets cracked, however, is her head, as she gets hit by a falling TV and goes into a coma.  In her head, however, she finds herself landing, Pleasantville-style, into the fictional world she used to watch on TV all day long: she wanders into the life of the/her hero, Ronwaldo (Rocky Salumbides), and finds herself entangled in his plan to avenge his brother’s death.

In the real world, the aggrieved Rudy is also jolted out of his lethargy, and begins to pitch her mother’s shelved scripts to potential producers. It’s a rite of passage which ushers in quite a few of Leonor‘s best moments, such as the scene in which a seasoned producer, an A-list star and an assistant director stage a hilariously impromptu reading from Rudy’s screenplay.

This concise scene is probably the most effective and heartening tribute to the dynamism of Philippine filmmakers, perhaps even more than the supposedly real footage of Leonor herself discussing and making a film called, well, Leonor Will Never Die. We may be one meta-step too far, but Ramirez Escobar’s undimmed enthusiasm to keep cinema alive – in all its shapes and forms – is to be appreciated.

Director, screenwriter: Martika Ramirez Escobar
Cast: Sheila Francisco, Bong Cabrera, Rocky Salumbides, Anthony Falcon
Producers: Monster Jimenez, Mario Cornejo
Executive producers: Aurora Oreta, Martika Ramirez Escobar, Quark Henares
Director of photography: Carlos Mauricio
Editor: Lawrence Ang
Production designer: Eero Francisco
Music composers: Alyana Cabral, Pan De Coco
Sound designer: Corrine De San Jose
Production companies: Arkeo Films, Anima
World sales: Cerkamon
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Dramatic Competition)
In Filipino, English
99
minutes