There is a pretty good reason why Leonor's TV is never switched off, although it might look strange that an old woman would prefer having action-packed movies playing all day long than watching, let's say, some telenovela. This is of course the first thing coming to mind of an average person whose way of thinking is rooted in the prejudice that all that sweet old ladies are supposed to do is cook, tend to their homes, knit the pullovers that no one will ever wear, and wait for their grandchildren to come and visit. Leonor (Sheila Francisco) is not that kind of granny. The films running on the telly are her legacy. She is a retired Filipino action film scripwriter and director, attached to the past but stuck in another life.
Leonor stopped making films after her beloved son Ronwaldo was accidentally shot as a child on the set of one of her movies. She quit the job to mourn, retiring to the solitude of her house that now – when the money from golden times is gone, is slowly falling apart. With the favourite son gone, and left by her husband/ former movie star Valentin (Alan Bautista), she is stranded with her demanding elder son Rudie (Bong Cabrera) still lodging under her roof.
If it's to believe Rudie, Leonor is careless and she doesn't even leave the house to pay the electric bills, as we will be told very early into the film. Not that she seems to care. When electricity gets cut off, she simply lits the candles and continues with her daily routines despite of being confronted by her son's harsh words that she isn't rich anymore, and since she doesn't have an assistant to deal with such ‘triffles' she should simply get real. The look on her face reveals she wished he weren't there. In a way, we wish it too because Leonor is a cool cat, and Rudie less so.
A curious event puts Leonor's life into jeopardy, but instead of dying as most of us would if a television set would bump on our heads from a floor above, she falls into coma. That is the place where she can not only continue to write her new scenario, she also ends up in it. In this action movie, Ronwaldo (Anthony Falcon) is alive, or at least his name is. Inspired by the lost son, his character is a grown-up working class man trained in martial arts who's fighting the main baddie with his bare fists. Leonor is trying to save his skin by re-writing the script on the spot, altering details last minute.
With her fascinating feature debut, Escobar pays tribute to the Asian B action movies of the 1970s and 1980s, letting two stories run simultaneously. Fights in the “other reality” are meticulously choreographed, and there is a vintage cheesiness to them. The sound is crackling, the photography grainy, and dialogues so retro with their palette of clichés that you get flash-backed with countless stached men in tight shirts who reigned the screens back in time. There is also a young stripper that goes by the name of Majestica, and she is the embodiment of all ‘simple, next door gals who were not fortunate in life', but are loveable and always find THE man (who – of course, saves both their ass and the day).
Escobar brings back the spirit of action movies to the big screen in her tremendously funny representation of a simple storyline that the industry has been recycling for a very long time before it got tired of it. She is also after something else – showing the creative process and passion invested in something that highbrow critics would label as trash art. Leonor is completely into her work, and her mind is perpetually plotting new mayhem. The lines are simply pouring out of her and straight onto the ribbon of an old typewriter. Old school until the end, Leonor has to have a physical contact to her written words.
This offbeat ode to the underdog film genre and the unstoppable creativity process has just had its world premiere at Sundance where we watched it.
