Female director Siege Ledesma’s first feature, Shift, shown in the Cinema One Originals batch of 2013, tells about Estela, a tomboyish young woman with red hair, caught in the crisis of her quarter life. After graduating in college with a degree in sociology, she wasn’t able to fulfill her dream to become a singer-songwriter, and she is now working in one of the many call centres in Manila, where she is being trapped.
Unmotivated, and always late for work, an openly gay senior agent, Trevor, is assigned to help guide her back on the right track. As they grow closer, Estela begins to develop romantic feelings for him, thus creating a complicated, unconventional relationship between them.
When Trevor breaks up with his boyfriend, and begins to question his own wants, Estela is caught in a dilemma on whether or not to act on her hidden feelings…
A contemporary and stylish look on the “Call Centres generation”, Shift reveals a subtle feminine talent in filming, with the nuances proper to neo-romantic feelings caught in the web of gay/lesbian characters who sometimes feel insecure to show their real attraction to others, and express themselves in awkward or harsh words, and in songs.
This is based on a personal experience by the director.
Max Tessier