The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes is a 2010 Filipino film directed by Raul Jorolan and produced by Unitel. The film uses a non-linear narrative style, using history to frame a tale of lost love and redemption spanning close to three decades, starting in 1981 with the tragic accident in the construction of the Manila Film Center, through to the 1986 People Power Revolution, which ended the 21-year Presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, and finally concluding in 2009, which finds the major characters of the film facing the consequences of the theft of one of 3,000 pairs of shoes of the First Lady Imelda Marcos. The film won the Special Jury Prize in the 2010 Bogota International Film Festival. It participated in the 2010 Vietnam International Film Festival in Hanoi and the 2010 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival. The film was rated "A" by the Cinema Evaluation Board of the Philippines and was also cited as Best Picture in the 2010 Catholic Mass Media Awards in the Philippines. Plot On the last day of the People Power Revolution in the Philippines in February 1986, 10-year-old Lucas Munozca (Marvin Agustin) finds himself swept up with a euphoric crowd that has entered the grounds of the Malacañang Palace. Lost in the tumult, Lucas stumbles into a room where the president's wife, Imelda Marcos, kept her infamous shoe collection. He plans to filch two pairs but only manages to steal one pair—for poetic justice and for love. Lucas gives the pair of red shoes from the country's First Lady to the first ladies of his life. The right shoe he gives to his mother, Chat (Liza Lorena), who ekes out a living giving manicures and pedicures while seemingly unable to recover from the loss of her husband, Domingo (Tirso Cruz III), the father of her only son, who was among the 169 workers said to have been buried alive when the upper levels of the Manila Film Center collapsed under construction in 1981 for the Manila International Film Festival project of the First Lady. The left shoe Lucas gifts to the love of his life, Bettina (Nikki Gil), the daughter of one of her mother's wealthy manicure home service customers. Lucas and Bettina eventually become a couple years later and go steady for 13 years until a betrayal ends the relationship.