The Remotes

In 2019, TIFF welcomed noted Filipino auteur John Torres to Wavelengths with his short We Still Have to Close Our Eyes, an experimental hybrid which employed documentary footage captured behind the scenes on the sets of Filipino feature films (including one belonging to Lav Diaz) to craft an eerie, speculative story about app-controlled human avatars.

Now Torres returns with The Remotes, a stylish, ambitious, and mournful narrative expansion of the short’s initial concept. Employing the armature of a greater budget and professional actors, the film interrogates insidious mechanisms of control, including state surveillance and tech platforms, as well as wraithlike expressions of generational anguish.

The premise revolves around a voice-guided system designed to “retrain” reckless drivers, but which may be more sinister than it seems. When the grieving Detective Mijares arrives to investigate a number of unusual road incidents, he becomes entangled with the enigmatic sisters Eva and Gill Cantero, each navigating their own losses and sorrows. Together, the three find themselves caught up in a mystery in which nothing — even one’s sense of self — feels at all secure.

Largely taking place after dark and replete with sinuous, hypnotic night drives, the film captures the spectral neon regions just beyond Manila in the claws of light. Spacious and elliptical in its exploration of post-colonial grief and increasing automation, The Remotes borrows liberally from the conventions of sci-fi, noir, the police procedural, and the gloss of commercial Filipino cinema, while subverting and reimagining each through Torres’ signature poetic sensibility and vision.

ANDRÉA PICARD

Content advisory: accident trauma, death, sex, mature themes