Two for the road

MANILA, Philippines - What is it about mountains and millennials? On your Instagram feed, you have probably seen (and double-tapped) beautiful, VSCO-ed shots of stylish girls and guys looking pensive on top of mystical Mount Pulag in Benguet. You most likely know someone who has hiked up to Mount Pico de Loro in Cavite, both for the view and the opportunity to show off her taut body in chica workout gear. When did mountain climbing become a thing? Why did it become a thing?There are a million reasons why, but here’s a guess. Climbing an actual mountain is far easier than conquering figurative ones. Maybe by willing yourself to reach a literal peak, you’re really telling your subconscious to scale those personal, intangible mountains: Mt. Get-Your-Life-Together, Mt. Get-Over-Your-Ex, Mt. Get-Rich-Or-Die-Trying. “See? You reached the top. You can do anything.” And just as this trend was gaining traction, Above The Clouds, an indie film about a grandfather and a teenager scaling a mountain of grief, had a one-time (sold-out!) screening at the Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival.

Rock bottom

After the Cinemalaya screening, the cast and crew gathered with writers and editors on the top floor of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. I spot Esquire’s Erwin Romulo and ABS-CBN’s Atom Araullo, among others. The film’s director, Pepe Diokno, paces about the room. Every few minutes, someone claps him on the back to say congratulations, but the worried look on his face never really goes away. “I was like this the whole time,” he sighs, covering his ears and eyes. “I can never watch my own films. The germ of the story idea came from a disaster,” he begins. It was 2009, and his debut film Engkwentro had just won the Lion of the Future (“Luigi de Laurentiis”) Award and the Orizzonti Prize at the Venice Film Festival, when Ondoy struck Manila, leaving hundreds dead.

But it was a personal loss that spurred him to form the story fully: in 2011, Pepe’s beloved grandmother Nena Diokno passed away. “I was really close to her. I grew up with her,” he says. Going through family albums after his Lola’s death made Pepe realize something. “When a loved one dies, it’s not just the person that you lose. You lose memories. All of my Lola’s stories about my Lolo, about martial law, about the war, I’ll never hear them again. You’re losing a part of yourself.” Bianca Balbuena, Pepe’s best friend and executive producer of the movie, shares a poignant untold story, “He wanted to complete it (Above The Clouds) for his Lola because she hated Engkwentro. But as he was in the process of writing, she passed away. It’s a very personal project for him.”

On top of creating a film his grandmother would have loved, Pepe’s sophomore project had to be at least at par with his first. “Coming from my first film which was…” he pauses, wary of sounding arrogant. We supply the word: “A success?” He smiles gratefully. “(The project) felt like this immovable object I had to conquer.” He really can’t pinpoint why the story’s setting ended up being a mountain, but he theorizes it had something to do with what he was feeling at that point. “There was a lot of fear and burnout,” he ruminates. “I guess (the mountain represents) the climb, the journey, the challenge.”

Pepe senior

The director established a non-negotiable early on. He penned the grandfather role with iconic rock star Pepe Smith in mind, and it was Pepe Smith or nothing. “Ninety-five percent of the movie studios we approached warned us about him,” says Bianca of the 67-year-old’s rock-and-roll lifestyle (read: sex, drugs, alcohol) that preceded him. But Pepe D was adamant. “I just knew he could do it.” Pepe Senior wasn’t immediately convinced, though. It took a couple of months before he finally said yes.

Acting was a mountain he had to conquer. “Maiba naman, medyo nakakasawa na rin yung stage,” he says in his trademark raspy voice. “One thing na hindi ko pa nagagawa is to act in front of the camera. So (director) Pepe guided me every step of the way, nag wo-workshop kami almost every morning bago mag-shoot.”

Bianca happily reports, “Pepe (Smith) is always early on set and I love working with him.” His inexperience in front of the camera actually helped. “He was so unsure about what he was doing, that he was just acting from the heart; very natural,” says Diokno.

Once Smith was locked down (trivia: they affectionately call him “Piyaps”), the challenge was to cast the right actor to play the bereaved 15-year-old Andy. They auditioned a lot of fresh faces but it was “love at first sight” with Ruru Madrid, says Bianca. The Protégé alum had the indescribable factor Pepe Diokno was looking for. (“Pag pasok pa lang niya ng pintuan, alam ko na,” the director says.)

Young survivor

Coincidentally, Ruru is actually a storm survivor. During Ondoy, his family found safety on their roof and even managed to save a drowning person. “Alam niya yung feeling of being helpless,” says the director.