“Perception is real, and the truth is not,” announces Imelda Marcos in “The Kingmaker,” a jaw-dropping documentary in which director Lauren Greenfield exposes just how effective the wounded peacock…
exposes just how effective the wounded peacock has been in reshaping her status. Once world-famous for her shoe collection, Imelda benefited enormously from husband Ferdinand’s two-decade dictatorship over the of the Philippines, until being forced to flee to Hawaii in 1986.
From the outset, Greenfield and editor Per K. Kirkegaard include shots of Imelda getting her makeup done, or asking, “How’s my tummy? Does it look big?” before sitting for one of the interviews in which she strategically attempts to reshape and control her own narrative.
Interweaving the photographer’s lurid, color-saturated look at Imelda today with archival footage, the stranger-than-fiction documentary reminds that small-town girl Imelda Trinidad Romualdez was whisked into this life after competing in the Miss Manila beauty pageant, which caught the attention of young politician Ferdinand Marcos. They married after an 11-day courtship, and though Imelda was instrumental in his political rise, the pressure was too much to bear, leading to a near breakdown.
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