The Promise and the Elevator Door
The 2025 premiere of Elevator Lady on VMX (Vivamax’s adult drama streaming platform) carried excess expectations beyond the usual reception of lovey-dovey or risqué films. The audience had already viewed the promotion blurbs: an elevator attendant describing the elevator eager to serve and capture the attention of patrons. How ambition and desperation intertwine. But behind that hook and the audience applause for the elevator lady was a real life story5 that was on the line desperately: the finances, the emotions, the society, and above all else, the exposure.
Aliya Raymundo (Lucy, or the character often simply called “Elevator Lady”), was both vulnerable and brave starring a story of survival. When class, opportunity and the public eye collide the frights of a packed lift triggers survival instincts with an elevator attendant. Hope and ambition converge in her character fleeing and power is her perilous entanglement with the kind she neither owns, nor understands.
The story was a gamble and not for the audience to see: the cost was the trust that is burned reputation and the all too real physical toll.
A Character Carved from Economic Survival
And Lucy works the elevator. High-rises contain a plethora of buildings and more elevators, confining Lucy to a single precursor job to more lucrative possibilities. An opportunity to garner more charm. To disarm more men. To reap the rewards of a higher social status, and perhaps elevate Lucy from her station of unfailing poverty.
The weight of the story shifts when Lucy becomes romantically involved with a high-profile, high-stakes, high-society, and, more importantly, a married client. The elevators offer Lucy more than the swift passage from story to story in the building. Her calculated smiles and keen observations offer an emotional repertoire entwined in a sense of barter masquerading as a transaction in dignity. Her emotional territory and relational geography shift and evolve, offering her new and vulnerable heart as collateral. Pain overshadowing the heart and claws of social and emotional capital enforcement are more than a “fall.”
From the Philippines, the narrative arc connected the “promise of possibility” to the “sting of betrayal” and to “real” class conversations that, in the Philippines, deal with class mobility, the socially constructed “pecking” order, and the economically unsheltered. More than anything the actor’s arc had to be personal.
The Actor’s Weight: Aliya Raymundo’s Leap
In interviews, Aliya Raymundo describes how her own story intertwined with Lucy’s despair and hope while preparing for the title role. Prior to Elevator Lady, she had TV and indie drama experience, but those roles were largely constrained by the industry’s expectations surrounding beauty, glamour, and emotionally-featherweight roles. Lucy was a step-up. Lucy would demand the actor to emotionally bare wounds that she didn’t always show.
For the scenes requiring emotional complexity — betrayal, shame, and longing — Raymundo was described as spending extensive rehearsal periods with the director to determine the nuances of what she could convey with silence. Raymundo mastered Lucy’s moments of silence, as when the elevator doors close, she presses her forehead against the chill of metal, or as she watches a reflection vanish and she is overwhelmed. Raymundo’s restraint came from her lived experience of a modest upbringing when she was younger, with early financial pressures and a sense of morally ambiguous choice that accompanied the “moving forward.”
Some interviewers commented how Lucy was one of the most challenging characters to film, impacting personal, off-screen life. There were nights without sleep because of the script, deep-seated feelings of guilt for the things the character does, and the emotional toll it takes on the actor. However, after filming wrapped, something shifted. She realized the roles weren’t just offered to her. She actively turned down scripts and began to negotiate for more substantial parts with meaningful emotional work.
This change in attitude regarding the personal choice of a career path is one of the untold stories about Elevator Lady.
When the Budget for Menana was Small and the Shoot was Extended
There were no large budgets and no flexible schedules for the production of Menana. Several crew members privately told local Filipino entertainment blogs that production had to be systematic in the deployment of resources. There was the reuse of filming locations, and rapid alternation of lighting and shooting setups. Crew members and actors often stayed to work or wait through power and filming delays during the scenes at night.
Some sequences assigned to the lift posed unique logistical challenges. Due to the intensity and close emotional nature of many scenes, and the tightly arranged camera angles within the confined space, the crew had to modify the elevator cabin set with movable panels for camera placement. This required longer daily preparation, safety checks, and additional takes to get the right frame. The unique strain set within the lights for extended periods, and the close warm environment had physical implications for the cast. The discomfort was felt with the warm and close environment of the set for extended periods. Whisper networks were concerned with the possible health implications for shoots of intimate scenes involving which Aliya Raymundo and the surrounding cast were assigned, with fatigue, dehydration, and emotional weariness being the most concerning. More intimate of certain takes being the most concerning.
On one occasion when filming the argument scene in the elevator, the crew were one cue away from making the atmosphere a little too real. The Raymundo kept everyone in the scene for and additional hour and was allowed to speak with the rest of the cast for comfort. Both on set and sources say were there was a marked difference in the atmosphere when it was time to get the scene rolling again.
It is not unusual for intimate dramas to leave similar emotional residue where art imitates life to such an extent that healing is required between takes, although this is seldom discussed. In the case of Elevator Lady, that intermingling felt less like an issue and more like validation of the authenticity of the construction.
Elevator Lady was bound to attract scrutiny for the complex and intertwining themes of moral ambiguity, gender, and upward mobility within intimate relationships. In the Philippines, the more conservative audience claimed some of the scenes crossed the line between suggestive and explicit, bordering on erotic. These tensions contributed to some of the promotional interviews for the film feeling defensive, where the cast and director were compelled to justify the incorporation of “necessary” intimacy scenes to reflect character distress.
Since the film is on a streaming platform (VMX), it was able to avoid some of the normalization legal restrictions associated with mainstream cinema. However, it also meant exposure to critiques for being “too niche” and “too adult” for wider audiences. Such a scenario placed the smaller production partners at a higher risk of exposed financial losses, given that no discernible audience was expected to compensate for the anticipated risk.
Some members of the cast and crew took a personal reputational risk in the interest of emotional realism as opposed to safety. Some promotional events were subdued rather than ostentatious. Certain sponsors were reluctant to enter strong partnerships, and conversations about cutting certain explicit scenes to appease conservative reviewers took place in the latter stages of post-production. In the end, some rawness was preserved to honor the authenticity of the narrative.
Responses to Elevator Lady and its varying reviews, revealed audience perception of the Lucy character as tragic and relatable. Many viewers expressed through social media the burdens women bear, and the ambitious within them, working low-paying, inconsequential jobs, and the tension at negotiating self-worth in dehumanizing spaces.
For cast members, including but not limited to Aliya, the roles in Elevator Lady required them to step into scenes of moral complexity. These were the grey areas in contrast to the simpler, virtuous roles they were used to. The impact of the film changed how some of their friends and family perceived them – not merely as actors, but as storytellers who chose to embrace discomfort.
Raymundo, in interviews some months later, remembered fans reaching out to her about how the character’s decisions stayed with them long after the film ended. She recalls people describing the film as “stuck with them” not because of its sensuality, but because of its human ache. This type of response made the long, sleepless nights, the creative risks, and the sacrifices feel worthy of something beyond the streaming counts and the box office.
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