LUCID

Philippines, 2019, 86 minutes, Colour.

Alessandra de Rossi, JM de Guzman, Peewee O'Hara, Bob Jbelli.

Directed by Victor Villaneueva.

This is the story of a young woman who lives with her aunt, drab conditions, the same routines, meal with her aunt, injection, travelling by bus to work, the crowded mineral of the streets, sitting at her desk, generally ignored or asked to do extra work.

However, this is also a film about dreams, especially lucid dreams where the dreamer has control of what they are dreaming. Which means then the screenplay moves often from the young woman’s drab existence to rather glamorous on dreams, gowns and make up, restaurants, exotic locations, a huge country mansion…

She can also change with a wave of hand the contents of the dream or else its style. At first, she dreams of the young attractive man from the office. However then a strange man enters her dreams, Xavi, who also has a lucid dreams and can control. There are many scenes of their interactions, the opportunity for the young woman to grow to understand herself, want to relate to is Abby, hope that he will meet her outside the dreams, but he does not.

In the meantime, in reality, there is an enthusiastic technical worker, who comes to fix the computers, likes the young woman, jokes with her, despite her lack of response. It emerges that he has a young son. They encounter the young woman at various times, join her for meals, are sometimes rebuffed. While her work suffers because of her dreaming and daydreaming at work, she is also saddened by the sudden death of her aunt. However, this leads to further dreams, leads to her linking up with the genial man and his son, becoming part of their lives. And she gets a promotion at work.

While the screenplay is slight, it is the visualising of the dreams, the lucidity of the dreams, the control of the dreams, the interplay between dreams in real life that makes the film interesting.

And, an example of popular Filipino entertainment.