Sheila Francisco in Leonor Will Never Die (Music Box Films)

Lest Christopher Nolan or the Wachowskis’ corner the market on the idea of meta filmmaking, Filipino writer/director Martika Ramirez Escobar offers up a lighter, more charming variation of that particular brand.

Leonor (Sheila Francisco), a former action screenwriter/director, has never gotten over the accidental death of her eldest son. She is so lost in her imaginative world or, more pointedly, not interested in real life as it is, that she forgets to pay the electric bill. Eventually, she pulls out an old screenplay and starts refashioning it to submit it for a competition, and also as a way to deal with the loss of her son. However, while outside in her home, she gets hit in the head by a television(!), goes into a coma, and finds herself living inside the screenplay she wrote, while in the hospital, her family tries to coax her out of a coma.

To call this lightly paced reflection on mortality and loss a genre mashup is putting it lightly. The film within a film—the movie going on in Leonor’s mind, The Return of the Kwago—is a dead-on parody of 1980s low-budget, macho action films, complete with absurd fighting sequences, too on-the-nose one liners, and a hero shirtless for no apparent reason. We are instantly transported to the world of Filipino pulp action, where everyone who dies does so in the hero’s arms and begs for revenge, where every encounter leads to a five-minute fight, and where the corrupt mayor kills without consequence until he meets our hero. The heroic protagonist in Leonor’s film is Ronwaldo (Rocky Salumbides), the name of her dead son, and he, in turn, wanders about in the real world as a ghostly presence in a pressed white shirt with a single bloodstain resembling a gunshot wound.

The movie opens with an impressive piece of misdirection: The camera’s point of view is at ground level as a chest is pushed into the middle of the shot and then a pair of feet step onto it. As the feet stand on tippy-toes, we get the idea that someone is attempting to hang themselves, and we brace ourselves accordingly. Turns out, it is just Leonor changing the lightbulb. This is just one example of the unpredictability and surprise that lie ahead.

When Leonor gets hit over the head by the television, goes into a coma, and then enters her own screenplay, the film really takes off. It’s a race against time to bring her out of the coma while Leonor remains in her own movie, where she can manipulate and take action to resolve her guilt about her son’s death. Problem is, the longer she does this, the likelihood she stays in the coma.

That’s the plot, but it’s the execution that matters. Leonor Will Never Die is funny, tender, and surprising. Sheila Francisco gives an unforced, open performance as Leonor, and the movie rests lightly on her shoulders. Escobar manages a delicate dance of keeping the tone frothy while delving into deeper and sometimes darker themes. (There is a pointed ding in the film within a film of former President Rodrigo Duterte. The mayor is a thinly disguised substitute who randomly accuses and kills poor people under the pretense that they are drug dealers.)

You are not likely to see another film quite like Leonor Will Never Die this year. It is the definition of brimming with life.