Isabel Sandoval’s Retro-Styled Filipino Noir

It’s easy to be allured by writer-director Isabel Sandoval’s new feature, Moonglow, which has the filmmaker returning to her native Philippines for a vintage crime story filled with passion, murder, blackmail, bribery and bullets, even if the latter only go flying at the very end. Elegantly lensed and colorfully designed, this film noir time capsule has shades of both Chinatown and In the Mood for Love, setting an impossible romance against the corrupt backdrop of Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship circa 1979.

As intriguing as all that sounds, and as lovely as the movie looks, Moonglow is less easy to watch than it is to admire. Slow-burn to a fault, with story twists we see coming a long time before they happen, it lacks the suspense any good thriller needs, while laconic performances don’t exactly keep viewers on the edge of their seats. Premiering in competition at Rotterdam, the film confirms Sandoval’s eye for graceful visual storytelling; perhaps next time she can raise the tension level a few notches.

The director, who grew up in the Philippines but was educated in the U.S., made waves in 2019 when her third feature, Lingua Franca, became the first movie by a trans filmmaker of color to play a major section in Venice. She’s since helmed episodes of TV series like Under the Banner of Heaven, Tell Me Lies and The Summer I Turned Pretty, while continuing to write, direct and/or star in short films on the side.

Sandoval is both behind and in front of the camera in Moonglow, playing a scheming if ultimately tenderhearted femme fatale with the classic film noir name of Dahlia. In the first scene, we see her roaming Manila on a quiet tropical night, slipping into an empty house and robbing a safe like an expert cat burglar. Later, Dahlia returns to working for local police chief Bernal (Dennis Marasigan), who we learn is the victim of her crime.

That early twist means the audience is already way ahead of the cops, who spend more than half the movie trying to pinpoint the culprit. To do so, Bernal enlists his nephew, Charlie (Arjo Atayde), a lawyer who’s been working in America and has come home to take care of his ailing father. Constant flashbacks to a night twelve years earlier reveal that Dahlia and Charlie have a romantic past, which flares up again when the latter’s investigation tosses him back into the sights of the woman he loved.

If movies like Out of the Past or Double Indemnity come to mind, that seems to be very much intended. Sandoval was clearly inspired by such crime classics, as well as by the swooning star-crossed lovers captured so stylishly by Wong Kar-wai. Moonglow channels some of the sultry, smoky atmosphere of those films, with Isaac Banks’ shadowy cinematography turning Manila into a colorful setting for all the double-crossings and back-stabbings, as well as a few heavy glances between the two leads.

Where the film falters is in its plodding rhythm and clunky dialogue, much of which is delivered too flatly by actors who don’t exactly steal their scenes. There are times in which Moonglow feels like an amateur production, even if the craft level remains high and Sandoval’s earnestness in capturing the genre’s essence feels admirable. But her movie piques our interest rather than grabbing us by the throat the way a good crime flick should.

Very much like in Chinatown, Dahlia’s initial robbery eventually opens up a can of worms that exposes citywide corruption, including a scandal in which arson was used to clear slums for new real estate developments. The way Sandoval rolls her country’s troubled past into a genre plot recalls another recent tropical thriller, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, although Moonglow lacks the retro artiness of that movie.

What it does have is plenty of old-school ambience, as well as a narrative that never once brings up gender. Unlike Lingua Franca, a love story in which Sandoval’s trans identity was also a major plot point, her Dahlia is simply another fatally flawed film noir heroine — one in a long line of silver screen femme fatales played by the likes of Joan Crawford or Rita Hayworth. Moonglow may be a loving if clumsy homage to great works of the past; the fact that it defies gender norms is clearly a nod to the future.