Leonor Will Never Die Review: If Being John Malkovich Was Even Weirder

Halfway through Martika Ramirez Escobar’s fantasy bending reality Leonor will never die, Leonor (Sheila Francisco), an aging action screenwriter, goes outside for a smoke. Leonor denies the seriousness of her financial situation, and tensions over an unpaid utility bill have led to arguments between her and her son Rudy (Bong Cabrera), who tells his mother that she needs to get her head out of the clouds. But it’s a conk on the noggin that brings the family together after Leonor was thrown into a coma by a TV – another source of conflict in their household – falling from an upstairs neighbor’s window.

This cartoon scenario encapsulates what’s going on thematically in this cross-genre film, one riff on The Wizard of Oz B. through the video “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys. The story begins in modern-day Manila, where the lovable, grandmotherly protagonist Leonor spends her days in TV series and old action movies. Leonor was a big name in the movies in the ’80s and ’90s, but she retired from filmmaking 10 years ago after her eldest son Ronwaldo (Anthony Falcon) died in an accident on set. Since then she has hid in her house, bickering with Rudy and spending quiet afternoons sitting with Ronwaldo’s ghost.

Long-dead, Ronwaldo is a character in the film who differs from his living relatives only in that he is slightly translucent. That also reveals something about Leonor will never die. The boundaries between life and death are permeable in Leonor’s world, as are those between imagination and reality. The film is peppered with faux VHS action sequences taken from an unfinished script that Leonor unearthed just before her accident. While her body is in a coma, her spirit enters the world of her film and she becomes both the film’s writer and a character in her own story. (On a heartfelt, amusing note, the characters in Leonor’s film love them all, but they can’t explain why.)

Photo: Music Box Films

Even though Leonor will never die is a loving homage to the wild violence of Filipino action cinema, but also influenced by quirky indie meta-comedies. Leonor’s journey across the rainbow and into her script has one be John Malkovich Quality – take for example a scene where Rudy dives into the TV mounted on the ceiling of a hospital waiting room to save his mother. At times, the film pulls back even further to reveal its own genesis by incorporating behind-the-scenes footage into the story. Towards the end of the story, writer-director Escobar makes herself a character in her film about a filmmaker who becomes a character in her film, appearing in an interlude set during a late-night editing session in which she debates how the movie should be finished .

Escobar is a qualified cinematographer and she and her crew enjoy playing with different cameras, shooting styles and formats – the action movie scenes, for example, are shot in 4:3. They all help create the layers of reality in this film. The “real world” consists of muted colors and long, uninterrupted wide-angle shots, while the action film reality is darker, grainier, and more colorful. The action scenes use tongue-in-cheek abrupt zooms and repeated action shots, sometimes reusing a particularly hard-hitting punch three or four times. But the funniest of those moments comes when the film’s hero, also known as Ronwaldo (Rocky Salumbides), reaches the end of Leonor’s unfinished screenplay. In the middle of a chase scene, he stops and turns around with a confused expression on his face while looking up at the sky for direction.

As well as being a fun aesthetic exercise, these action film tributes represent a nostalgic nostalgia for a simpler world – a world where machine guns are plastic, good and bad are easily distinguished, and any problem can be solved with it a roundhouse kick. When the topics get tough, the absurdity of the action movie characters’ wigs and line readings keeps the tone light. Even the simple fact that Leonor is a woman has a wistful quality: Escobar’s version of the Filipino film industry is a matriarchy controlled by powerful women, a fantasy that stands in sharp contrast to the hyper-macho historical reality.

Photo: Music Box Films

Leonor will never die‘s scrap has its downsides. The story weaves around each new plot point as it’s presented, and combined with the multimedia shooting style, it has a loose, collage-like quality. Viewer tolerance for this approach may vary. And while Escobar’s honesty is refreshing when she admits on screen that she doesn’t know how to end the film, the musical ends does feel a little hooked. Still, Escobar’s candid embrace of the process adds to the film’s charm. A sense of play and joyful collaboration pervades Leonor will never die, even when dealing with serious matters of life, death and legacy. It reminds us that love, like creativity, is alive and that both are meant to be shared.

Leonor will never die opens in a limited edition on November 25, with a nationwide expansion in December.