Cinemalaya 2022: Leonor Will Never Die (opening film)

When I was a kid, my watching time of whatever cartoon or game show of the day would be interrupted by the occasional local action movie trailer. These cheaply made, often goofy trailers cast a spell on me, and watching some of these films later (thanks to VHS tapes rented by my father) just reinforced that spell. And I wasn't the only one: I remember many times when I would walk to the nearest sari-sari store and see a group of men, women and boys gathered around a TV screen showing a local film. There's a reason why our culture is so inspired by these films: why our comedy draws from Dolphy and his ilk, why our romantic films shape how we deal with our own love stories, and why our action films have influenced even our politics.

Leonor Will Never Die acknowledges that long-lasting influence, but also looks at the relationship between man and film in a broader sense, in that people use art and the creation of art to escape from their own problems and to find closure to those same problems. 

Leonor used to be a screenwriter, in contrast to the macho, testosterone infused genre she primarily worked in. She still is, technically, though she hasn't had enough luck getting a job lately. The Filipino action film isn't exactly thriving in this day and age, and the kinds of films Leonor used to write doesn't really exist anymore. At the same time, she struggles with personal loss and issues of her own. As she tries to find the ending to her story, Leonor does what she does partly out of a search for closure, but also out of a desire to correct past mistakes, and take back the family that she thinks she has lost.

Leonor's journey is also a dissection of authorship - as the metafictional third act asks us, who decides how narratives are constructed? Some narratives organically grow from the audience, but where does that leave the creator? And ultimately, how divorced should a finished film be from its creator once it is let loose into the world? Read in another way, Leonor takes control of her own story in a way few women are allowed to even now, creative visions often giving way to constraints of money, cinema politics, sexism, or a combination of the above.

The film also recognizes the power of film in its creation of communal spaces, whether it be overflowing crowds ready to watch the new Star Cinema rom com, or a bunch of people huddling around an Abenson's TV screen, or a row of otherwise distracted commuters on a provincial bus. Film connects us, restores us, heals us. That's a pretty nice sentiment to have, I think.

This review originally appeared on letterboxd and was rewritten for this blog.