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Dementia
Year of Release: 2014
Director: Perci M. Intalan
Screenwriters: Renei Dimla & Jun Lana
Producer: IdeaFirst Company
Cast: Nora Aunor, Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Bing Loyzaga, Yul Servo, Chynna Ortaleza
Mara returns to Batanes with her adoptive family, who’re hoping that her memories of her childhood experience will help cure her dementia. What Mara remembers is how a couple brought her home to keep company with their biological child, Olivia, who suffers from psychotic disorder and has to be chained to furniture. Mara’s able to pacify Olivia’s violent moods, but she faces a crossroads in her life when the man she has fallen in love with asks her to be his wife.
Dementia succeeds primarily by relying on expectations that it fulfills in unexpected ways. It proceeds primarily as a supernatural horror film but brings up a social condition, that of orphaned subjects for whom exploitation is more acceptable than abandonment. It pursues a narrative throughline that brings up unreliable recollections of traumatizing events, then flashes the title credit like an afterthought, nearly an hour into the presentation; where it goes from then on will have to be part of the discovery process. Finally, it features Nora Aunor, older and wearier after her long-drawn-out sabbatical in the US—but the greater portion of her character arc is taken up and developed by younger actors. In fact, one would be misadvised to expect one of her fireworks-laden readings in this film; her comeback career teems with such treats, but Dementia is a reminder that her artistry cannot be separated from her expertise as producer and director.[1] She exercises self-restraint in order to allow the work’s various possibilities to branch out and raise further questions about the function of the mind in comprehending pain, memory, desire, and pleasure.
Note
[1] Spoiler alert: on May 21, 2025, in commemoration of Nora Aunor’s first birth anniversary after her death, the producer’s Facebook page uploaded the raw and unedited take titled “Seq. 74, Shot 2,” comprising the central revelation in the film. Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr., who reposted the file on the same date, reported the director’s account: “I whispered to her to stare at the camera. I told her that her character will go from not remembering to remembering bits and pieces, then without understanding she remembers the pain, then slowly it all fades away. I didn’t expect her not to even blink. There was nothing in front of her except our cinematographer and the camera. She was literally only looking at the lens. But the power her eyes wield. Mackie [Galvez, cinematographer] said he couldn’t believe what he was recording. Unfortunately for the film we had to sacrifice this one long take by inserting flashbacks to better serve the story.”
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