Bradley Liew’s ‘Singing in Graveyards’ is an existential drama with a twist. A
washed up rock ‘n’ roll impersonator seeking former glory sounds like a cliché
story in the same vein as Darren Aronofsky’s ‘The Wrestler’. However, this film is more creative and playful,
blurring reality and imagination in every take, especially when you realize
Filipino rock legend Pepe Smith plays the impersonator to… Pepe Smith.
Smith is instantly magnetic from the start
till the end. Shambling around his house, as the penniless character Pepe
Madrigal talks to himself as though he is actually Pepe Smith and eats nothing
but chocolate porridge whilst driving a hearse. Everything about him is
engaging and sympathetic as we follow his journey as he tries to write a love
song for Pepe Smith’s comeback and play in the profitable opening act.
The real Pepe Smith meanwhile is derided in
the film as an egocentric and selfish character, which is a crowd pleaser every
time, particularly for Filipino audiences. Every insult Pepe throws at himself
is a cue for boisterous laughter. Smith’s casting is also not the only
hilarious meta-highlight. Renowned director Lav Diaz ironically plays a self-interested,
money grabbing producer and actress Mercedes Cabral plays a supporting
character as an aspiring actress who can’t shed her sexualized image.
Taken at face value, this film, complete
with the estranged ex-wife and son characters, sounds relatively typical of the
genre. However the film also avoids cliché deftly and adds a dreamlike
fantastical element to its presentation. Time and space are compressed with
creative transitions, where characters move in and out of doors to blur the
lines between real and imagined. Much like Pepe’s own dreams which begin to
slowly take a darker turn when confronted with present-day reality.
Oh and there is also a goat and a dog.
Their roles in the story are best left unexplained.
Whilst much concerns Pepe Smith, one cannot
avoid the intriguing characters around him, particularly that of Mercedes
played by Mercedes Cabral. Whilst Pepe Smith dreams of being another person,
Mercedes can’t get away from her past identity. She not only steals scenes at
times, she almost steals the entire film when things gets explosive during a
casting session with some sneering male filmmakers. Pepe and Mercedes story
arcs twist and turn around one another but it is clearly Pepe’s story and we
never fully find the satisfying ending scene you would expect for Mercedes
after seeing all of her struggles.
But with a run time of 142 mins, some of
the middle sequences do begin to sag and repeat. The man-child character Pepe
plays almost starts to lose his charm. Yet with every scene more or less done
in a single unbroken take with fantastic production design and cinematography,
you can shed some forgiveness on Liew for finding it difficult to edit his own
film. Overall, the film picks up again in the final act and gathers pace to a
wonderful end.
The visually resplendent film provides us a
character portrait that is full of ennui, sadness and humor of a man lost in
past delusions, which unravels in the face of an unforgiving present. Bradley
Liew accomplishes a magnificent feat in showing the slow awareness of mortality
through playful inventiveness worthy of the legendary Pepe Smith.
Rifyal Giffari