two bestfriends and a fake funeral
A wake conjures images of grief, gloom, a needless loss and utter helplessness.
Of course, a thoroughly informed humanity sees it as an act of deliverance and a final act of acceptance. Talk of from the dust you came and into the dust you settle.
When John (Joross Gamboa) finds out he has very little time left, he reflects on it and decides he would like to personally see how it goes at the wake. His great expectation is watching how his friends would craft their eulogy and how they regard him at the time of his “death.”
He needs a good friend and reliable confidante to make this all happen without a hitch.
He reveals his plan to his BFF — best friend forever — Mark (Edgar Allan Guzman). Poor friend gets the shock of his life but since he truly loves his friend, he agrees to
all the strange details.
The coffin would not be opened to make sure the “dead” can mingle with the crowd without being noticed.
Deadma Walking is by turn hilarious, but it is the kind of comedy that brings in the moment of truth about life on earth.
To be sure, the film can send moviegoers rolling on the floor with laughter, but the well-nuanced script allows the viewers to recover and mull scenes from their own lives and how it would be like if they themselves hear the funeral speeches delivered by friends.
The movie has elements of Jun Lana’s Die Beautiful, but it goes beyond literal death. Other than the fact that the lead characters are gays, the comparison ends there. Die Beautiful stages death in all its physical glory.
But Deadma Walking makes us all reflect on death as tragicomic and thus appreciated in many levels. It helps us see the eye of death as it is but with a sense of understanding why life is what it is to many people. And why death must come — as the saying goes — like a thief in the night.
The film’s biggest asset is the superb acting of Joross and Edgar Allan as the best friends out to stage a fake funeral for personal reasons. For John, he wants to know who his friends are and who can stand by him in his “last hours.”
Joross delivers the kind of acting that makes us all realize friends can either be for good or part of your life for dubious reasons. His reactions during the wake are no doubt clue to his actor’s instinct when challenged by ensemble acting.
Not to be outshone is Edgar Allan as Mark on whose lap fell the burden of faking a wake and making it real and truly believable for John’s friends and relatives.
Edgar Allan buried his real self to be the honest-to-good beshie of John. In the role, he delights, he shocks, he can almost kill after a shocking discovery during the wake. He is so consistently good there is no doubt he also deserves the best actor trophy in this film.
The supporting cast members do just as well like Dimples Romana, Candy Pangilinan, Nico Antonio and Bobby Andrews.
The special participation of Gerald Anderson and Vin Abrenica provides another clue that the friendship faltered at some point and put to real test by his fascination with his best friend’s lover discovered by accident during the wake.
Director Julius Alfonso hewed closely to the well-written screenplay and the result is the spontaneous unraveling of an engrossing
story of two best friends.
Deadma Walking should provide a good balance to the other entries of this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF).
The script won the second prize in the screenplay division of the 2016 Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the literary competition that fielded the blockbuster romance-comedy That Thing Called Tadhana.
It is not surprising that it is the first MMFF entry to be rated A by the Cinema Evaluation Board (CEB).
(During the presscon, I told the director and the two lead actors that a fake funeral was staged in real life by writer Gilda Cordero Fernando who mounted a macabre, if, funny rehearsal of her own wake courtesy of her dear and loyal friends).
Deadma Walking opens Dec. 25 in cinemas.