Leonor Will Never Die

One of the questions that journalists tend to ask directors in interviews is, “How close is the film you made to the one in your head before you made it?” Filipino filmmaker Martika Ramirez Escobar’s delicious meta-screwball comedy Leonor Will Never Die offers a zany reverse extrapolation of that question by having an ageing, retired maker of cheapjack genre films dream the remainder of an unfinished script while in a comatose state.

Sheila Francisco’s Leonor lives hand-to-mouth with her failson Rudie (Bong Cabrera) and the ghost of her beloved older son Ronwaldo (Rocky Salumbides), whom she has immortalised as a vest-and-headband action hero and funk-dance prodigy in her movies. This counterintuitive cine-fantasy paints cinema as a form of easy escapism that bridges the divide between life and death: on the other side, Leonor finds herself trapped in one of her slickly edited and eyewateringly violent capers; while over her, Rudie has been told to read the script to his mother in the hope it’ll rouse her.

Escobar’s go-for-broke handling of the material favours fun outtakes, flip humour and nostalgic hat-tips to the days when the Philippines had real gravitational pull as a hub for maverick genre enthusiasts wanted to parlay the beautiful/desolate surroundings into their scuzzy opus. And just when you reach the point where you think that Escobar has finally lost the plot, she crops up on camera and admits just that.

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ANTICIPATION.
Sounds like a low-budget Charlie Kaufman homage direct from the Philippines. 3

ENJOYMENT.
Something a little different. Some sweet sentiment, and it’s never less than fully bonkers. 4

IN RETROSPECT.
The fun-time larks wear a tad thin by the end, but this is a stellar calling card for Escobar. 3

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Directed by
Martika Ramirez Escobar

Starring
Sheila Francisco, Bong Cabrera, Rocky Salumbides

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