Released 7 APRIL
ne 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 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.
