Nene
2020 · 17m · Philippines
Directed by King Louie Palomo
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Two narratives run parallel: a mother and son waiting for a journey to begin, and miles away, another mother preparing for hers to end.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The parallel-narrative structure *should* feel like inert festival-circuit handwringing, but Palomo's refusal to collapse these two mothers into neat metaphor—refusing the obvious symmetry—is genuinely contrarian in its restraint, almost annoyed at sentimentality.
A formally disciplined meditation on simultaneity and maternal time; the editing rhythm that holds both narratives in suspension without commentary reveals a filmmaker conversant with the lineage of structural poetics—Varda, Akerman—executed with visible precision.
The choice to let both mothers occupy the same emotional register—neither valorized, neither pitied—through sound design alone (the way silence functions identically in both spaces) is the micro-decision that transforms parallel narrative from gimmick into something that actually breathes.
Reviews
A touching and a believable depiction of what must be several people's real-life experiences, Nene, however, comes across as a personal epitaph left for someone dearly loved. Bringing all the three characters together, Palomo, yet again, through simple storytelling, achieves a touching moment that brings the audience closer to this family.