Alimuom (in English, "Vapours"—specifically, the smell of freshly-rained vegetation) is a 2018 Filipino sci-fi indie film from director Keith Sicat, loosely based on a webcomic series also by Sicat titled “Outerspace Filipino Workers”, itself a play on the “Overseas Filipino Worker” trope.
In The Future, Earth’s been exhausted of much of its natural resources, pollution has driven the remaining population into vast biodomes, and easy space travel has resulted in a boom of offworld industrial, commercial, and residential ventures on other worlds, largely built and serviced by Outerspace Filipino Workers, who in the tradition of their Earth-based ancestors travel to distant worlds to make what living they can, not seeing their families and loved ones for years on end. Back on Earth, the available arable land has become so reduced or poisoned that its governments have outlawed any kind of actual, organic farming, and yet some people are desperate and literally hungry enough that they’ll break the law if that’s what it takes …
Starring Ina Feleo as Professor Diwata Encarnacion, whose family's work centres on cataloguing and preserving botanical diversity, particularly with regards to agricultural security.
The film was a major entry in the 2018 TOFARM Film Festival, an indie festival that promotes awareness of, and concern for, Philippine agricultural and environmental protection.
Tropes featured:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: It's never specified exactly how far this is into the future though, perhaps in part to maintain Plausible Deniability in the pace of technological development.
- Asian and Nerdy: Diwata, Esper, and their dad are seasoned scientists, specifically along the lines of agricultural botanists.
- Beeping Computers: A sound for nearly every change in nearly every digital display shown.
- The Big Board: Some of the biggest holographic computer displays have replaced actual whiteboards, like the one Diwata lectures with at the University of the Philippines–Los Baños campus.
- Holographic Terminal (but voice-activated)
- Blue/Orange Contrast
- Corrupt Bureaucrat
- Cyberpunk: The visuals of the genre at least, including neon lighting and heavy use of cool lighting tones, ranging from blue to violet to almost red.
- Post Cyber Punk: The movie's actually not as pessimistic in its setting despite the heavy toll of pollution and environmental destruction and the existence of interstellar Mega Corps, and in fact, as a film about the importance of farming and food security, Science Is Good (at least, the natural sciences are, anyway).
- Dead Partner: Government agent G, who was killed in the line of duty fighting the rebel farmers, turns out to be the wife of Agent B, who along with Agent K accompany Diwata outside the biodome for protection.
- Domed Hometown: The Mega Manila Biodome, and presumably, other major urban areas on Earth, since living outside it is just too toxic, and nothing can grow outside—supposedly.
- Dystopia
- Enhance Button: Averted; when Diwata screen-captures one frame of a video showing a rebel farmer who resembles her long-lost sister Espie, she doesn't appear to do much with the screen cap other than to zoom in on it on her own computer just to get a better look.
- Extreme Graphical Representation
- Future Copter: The hovercraft that brings Diwata and the two agents to rebel territory in the Polluted Wasteland is not exactly a helicopter, as it resembles and hovers more like a giant insect, resembling a sort of fly, cicada or beetle.
- Gratuitous English: Many characters—these are Filipinos, after all, whose ancestors were thoroughly educated in English thanks to American colonisers and a government that encouraged migrant labour, and in this future English is still presumably an international (and interstellar) language of business—but Mr Aguirre in particular, when explaining government policy in official capacity.
- Green Aesop: It was a movie made by an indie studio that supports farming efforts, so …
- Jaded Washout: Diwata’s (and Esper’s) dad, whom you can’t really blame, since the government and massive private corporations basically took away years’ worth of his agricultural research and used it for their own selfish ends.
- La Résistance: The rebel farmers outside the biodome. Diwa's missing sister Espie is one of them.
- Long-Distance Relationship: Diwata and her husband. They were in fact about to engage in what can only be described as cybersex … until the online chat cuts out for lack of funds. To use a Tagalog word: bitin.
- MegaCorp: The vague, giant, planet-spanning corporations that appropriated the research of people like the Encarnacion family. Some of them are big enough that it’s implied they own entire offworld mining colonies or property developments (one colony named “Ezzem” is a pretty transparent Take That! to the Real Life SM Group, the Philippines’ currently largest retail giant-cum-land developer).
- Missing Mom: Diwata and Esper’s mum died a while back. (Even Esper herself is a “Missing Aunt” to Joaquin, though it’s not confirmed if she actually died.)
- Ms. Fanservice: Ooh, Diwata. The first directly plot-relevant scene shows her stretched out, in a sheer negligee, mostly bare ass to the camera; later on she wears some (in fairness, pretty mildly) revealing outfits—despite also being married and having a preteen son. One of the movie's subplots, in fact, has her trying to maintain a Long-Distance Relationship with her OFW husband—complete with the issue of how to keep up their (cyber)sex life.
- The Silk Spider burlesque performer in the nightclub might count too.
- No Antagonist: There's no really clear-cut one. The film initially sets one up to think government official Mr Aguirre might be this, and later the rebel farmers as a whole (they are, after all, officially the government's enemies), but in both cases they're made sympathetic and their perspective and reasons for their actions are laid out.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Aguirre, at least initially, and implicitly everyone above him in the Ministry of Agriculture, who’ve been sitting down on essential database access that Diwata badly needed. It takes her several back-and-forth visits to his office before she gets what she needs.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He does try to help her where it's really needed, albeit it taking some prodding on her part, and eventually offers her a Ministry position.
- Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future: Not by much, but most of the holographic screens are still largely monochrome or limited to two or three colours at best. Possibly the filmmakers thought it’d be too distracting, and/or technically difficult, to produce interactive, full-colour displays. (There are full-colour photo and video inserts, however.)
- Polluted Wasteland: All the land on Earth outside the biodomes, it's implied. Nothing apparently grows out here, except wherever the rebel farmers are hiding out. (Even the air inside the Mega Manila Biodome doesn't seem all that clean either, given people still go around with masks inside of it.)
- Product Placement: Anytime there's alcohol in the movie it's usually San Miguel Pale Pilsen beer.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Mr Aguirre’s Establishing Character Moment has him wearing futuristic mirrored shades.
- Science Hero: Diwata is a professor of biology or botany at UP Los Baños; she lectures on plant varieties, and is hired by the government to identify and do research on mutant seeds.
- Science Is Good: Particularly the natural sciences, like biology or botany, as well as agricultural disciplines in general; as Diwata's family and employers can attest, they're crucial to maintaining food security in a future of overpopulation and pollution severely limiting arable land and crop growth potential.
- Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: The poster in the title image, with Ina Feleo aiming a gun in both hands at the camera.
- Shout-Out:
- Diwata's dad listens to Eartha Kitt, saying she's his favourite singer.
- The song "Mr Pogi ('Handsome') in Space", by OPM (Original Pilipino Music) band Radioactive Sago Project, plays in one scene, while Diwa's waiting for Leo to come online.
- The Stinger: Agent B isn't dead yet, but left outside the biodome, unconscious after being defeated by the rebels, he wakes up and gasps for air as he gets his helmet and mask back on.
- Time Dilation: Apparently Einstein's theory of relativity has been proved as a physical law by this future (Diwata explicitly says it's now a fact, though in reality that's not quite how scientific theories work). It's plot-relevant because wherever Leo is, time's passing more slowly for him than for her, so a one-year work contract for him is roughly equivalent to at least five years for her on Earth, which makes his distance all the more painful. (The problem is, as the physics is currently understood, this should work both ways, so from Leo's point of view, Diwata should be ageing slower than him too!)
- Unnaturally Blue Lighting: Comes with the Cyberpunk-style setting, most blatantly wherever Diwa's husband Leo's room is.
- Used Future
- Zeerust: With all the space travel, biodomes, and holographic computers, people still also use solid-screened smartphones that appear to have changed little from The New '10s (though it's fair to assume the unseen software might be very different by then).
