Chedeng and Apple are ladies in their golden years. At first glance, the two two friends don’t seem to share any similarity.
Chedeng, 66 years old, a retired school principal, has led a straight, calm, and peaceful life. She wants everything to be in order and always keeps her nose clean.
A trait which her lifelong friend, Apple, doesn’t have. At 63, no children and has been at the receiving end of abuse by her sadistic live-in partner, Apple’s life is as messy as it can get. Shit happens to her with every step she takes.
Despite the differences, the two senior citizen friends share one thing in common: they are both prisoners.
Chedeng has been taking care of her ailing wheelchair-bound husband and has raised their three sons. She doesn’t even have time to come out of the closet as a lesbian, a secret she kept well for too long that she almost forgot her sexuality. Apple, a victim of circumstances, has been boxed by her series of bad life decisions.
When her husband dies, Chedeng decides to free herself and comes out to her children. She has been a loyal wife to her husband, and now it’s time for her to be loyal and true to herself. What other way to start her new life than by embarking on a search for the woman she truly loved all these years: Lydia, her ex-girlfriend.
Chedeng’s heavy chain of society’s expectations of what it is to be a woman has been unshackled. Freedom.
Not to be outdone, Apple deserves her freedom, too. And she takes it in her cold and blooded hands. In a fit of rage, Apple kills her live-in partner, beheads him and stuffed his head inside a fancy Louis Vuitton bag.
Together, the pair drop their lives, cross seas and scale mountains not just to chase Chedeng’s lost love but to reclaim the choice of living the life they wanted for themselves, filled with hope and youthful abandon.
Both directors want this film to be their love letter to women, especially to those who didn’t have the chance to come out because of their generation’s bigoted zeitgeist. In these pressing times where the world confronts the issues facing women, the directors would like this to be a film that sends the message that women from all walks of life, though have been receiving punches left and right by the patriarchal society, caged in a closet and have never given the chance to soar, are now standing up, fighting for the freedom that they long deserve and are ready to behead the patriarchy and hide it inside a luxurious Louis Vuitton bag forever.
Fatrick Tabada
Tabada is the writer of a critically acclaimed box office hit in local release and international film festivals, Jesus Is Dead (Patay na Si Hesus), a family road trip, comedy film. It premiered in Frameline and won Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival. He won the Best Screenplay Award in Jun Lana’s Screenwriting Workshop. Though he has been making short films for quite some time, Chedeng and Apple is his first full length film.
FILMOGRAPHY
2017 – Chedeng and Apple
Rae Red
Red wrote the Philippine entry to the 90th Academy Awards, Birdshot. Her first short film, Luna, was a finalist at the 2016 Cine Filipino Film Festival Short Features category. Her first film, Chedeng and Apple is a finalist at the 2017 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. Her second feature Babae at Baril is currently in production and is set to premiere at the 2018 Cinemalaya Film Festival.
FILMOGRAPHY
2017 – Chedeng and Apple
Max Tessier