Luke Miraflor’s short film “Clairvoyant” is a study of the mindset of a ten-year old girl Angela (Jewel Phiona) who has been seeing and feeling, time and again, a series of foreboding images in her mind.
It is an expressionistic project meant to disturb the senses not only of the character herself but the people around her, most especially her father (Richard Quan) who wants and pushes her to maximize the gift of clairvoyance to solve familyproblems, one of them poverty, and mother (Sue Prado) who sympathizes and pities her daughter’s pent-up thoughts and emotions—maternal instinct of carrying chips on her shoulder if only for a loved one.
I saw “Clairvoyant” as one of the movies shown in the XL section of the 26th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan) in Bucheon City, South Korea. BiFan’s judicious selection of films, local and foreign, was a testament that Miraflor’s entry was deserving of its genre features as the festival is a showcase of outstanding horror, fantasy, sci-fi, thriller, legend, supernatural etc. films.
Its black and white texture has added a dimension of eeriness to its phantasmagoria happening inside the consciousness of the child.
The single setting of the film in a provincial decrepit house is a giveaway that the family is poor and wanting of liberation from it which the dad thinks her daughter is the savior let alone the development of her soothsaying talent only to realize that all her intuition is a product of the mental unhealthiness brought about by the COVID-19 terror.
Being an adman himself, Miraflor manages to incorporate the visual prism of collage very effectively cut to split-seconds in externalizing the wits and pits of the child.
“Clairvoyant” was received enthusiastically at the 26th BiFan mostly by Korean audiences, young and old alike. They interactively participated in the forum after the screening facilitated by the fest’s volunteers and managers. It was surprising that a Filipino genre film got the foreign watchers glued to their seats.
“Clairvoyant” is one of the shorts in the Short Feature Category Set A to be exhibited at the 18th Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival on August 8 & 11 at 6:15 pm at the Tanghalang Manuel Conde (CCP Arthouse Cinema).