Adela
13 September 2008, lunch time
The first film I watched at the film festival was Adela. It’s a quiet and slow look at the life of a 80 year old Filipino lady living in a shanty town dump site on the outskirts of Manila. The character who the film is named after, Adela, is played to perfection by Anita Linda, who is probably the Sophia Loren of the Philippines. (She’s 84 years old and travelled to Toronto to take part in the premier of the film. It was very sweet.) The movie itself was really good, although it’s a bit hard to watch. The director really wants you to feel the slow pace of Adela’s life, so while everything is hustling and bustling around her, we watch as she wanders around, waits for telephone calls, etc. Scenes play out longer than you would think they should & start without any characters at all in them; dialog is sparse; etc. The film is very well put together, but can be a challenge to actually watch. Still Anita Linda’s performance definitely makes the film well worth watching.