Leonor Will Never Die movie review (2023) | Little White Lies

Leonor Will Nev­er Die

04 Apr 2023 / Released: 07 Apr 2023

A close-up portrait of an elderly woman framed by a colourful, curved tunnel.
A close-up portrait of an elderly woman framed by a colourful, curved tunnel.
3

Anticipation.

Sounds like a low-budget Charlie Kaufman homage direct from the Philippines.

4

Enjoyment.

Something a little different. Some sweet sentiment, and it’s never less than fully bonkers.

3

In Retrospect.

The fun-time larks wear a tad thin by the end, but this is a stellar calling card for Escobar.

A retired action film screen­writer falls into a coma that trans­forms into one of her own scripts in Mar­ti­ka Ramirez Esco­bar’s debut feature.

One 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 before you made it?” Fil­ipino film­mak­er Mar­ti­ka Ramirez Escobar’s deli­cious meta-screw­ball com­e­dy Leonor Will Nev­er Die 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.

Escobar’s go-for-broke han­dling of the mate­r­i­al favours fun out­takes, flip humour and nos­tal­gic hat-tips to the days when the Philip­pines had real grav­i­ta­tion­al pull as a hub for mav­er­ick genre enthu­si­asts want­ed to par­lay the beautiful/​desolate sur­round­ings into their scuzzy opus. And just when you reach the point where you think that Esco­bar has final­ly lost the plot, she crops up on cam­era and admits just that.

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