CIFF 2022 | ‘Leonor Will Never Die’ review: Martika Ramirez Escobar’s daring metatextual masterwork
Compulsively enjoyable and refreshingly genuine, “Leonor Will Never Die” is a meta-comedy like no other.
Sheila Francisco in “Leonor Will Never Die.” Photo courtesy of Arkeofilms.
This year’s film festival circuit will probably not see a more earnest, heartfelt entry than “Leonor Will Never Die.” As poignant as it is chaotic, Martika Ramirez Escobar’s genre-bending film throws camp, over-the-top 80’s action pastiche and deft metafictional explorations of grief into a supercollider, letting it all rip over the course of an increasingly surreal 100-minute runtime.
Leonor Reyes, a retired writer and director of gonzo gangster flicks, spends her twilight years absent-mindedly cooking, buying pirated DVDs off the streets, and forgetting to do anything remotely important like paying her electricity bills. Leonor is also a woman haunted; constantly shadowed by both the wasted promise of her unfinished script “Ang Pagbabalik Ng Kwago” (The Return of Kwago), and the literal ghost of its main character Ronwaldo. When a television set falls on her head and sends her into a coma, she is transported into her own script and must complete it to awaken, while her estranged husband and recalcitrant son do all they can to keep her alive in the real world.
The film’s best moments lie in its technical choices — manual zooms, oversaturated colours, cheesy synth soundtrack and exaggerated yet whip-smart choreography that hark back to the stylistic look and feel of 80s South East Asian cinema without uncharitably cheapening a bygone age. While the first act stumbles a few times in terms of narrative clarity, the second act finds sure footing, and culminates in a “Truman Show”-esque final act that spirals into magical, metatextual chaos and comedy. Escobar makes some very daring directorial choices, pushing the envelope on breaking the fourth wall — one could argue that it even breaks a fifth wall that most other directors didn’t even know existed. “Leonor Will Never Die” also achieves the perfect balance between tragedy and comedy, deftly ensuring that moments of grief and mourning have enough room to strike a chord in viewers’ hearts, before returning to the slapdash chaos of its unique brand of meta-humour.
It’s impossible not to be beaming by the time the film’s joyful, musical outro unspools onscreen — a love letter to 80s Filipino cinema, the process of filmmaking, and most of all, the hard work of the film’s cast and crew. “Leonor Will Never Die” is a truly delightful cinematic outing; one that its creators clearly enjoyed crafting, and that its viewers will, likewise, enjoy seeing.
“Leonor Will Never Die” plays at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival on October 20 and 22, 2022, and opens in select U.S. cinemas on November 25, 2022.
