A unique and artistic treatment of gritty family survival but one that will turn away viewers with its carnal setting and sand-blasted treatment of the human condition
If the context of a film set in a movie theatre is a familiar one, Brillante Mendoza’s essay on family affairs is something completely different. Located in the steamy downtown of an unnamed Philippine city the entire film takes place inside or immediately in front of the Family movie theatre. The Family theatre might take its name from the family that lives there or it might just be a traditional theatre name. But the moniker definitely does not come from the featured films which are 100% pornography. This is the only genre affordable to the Pineda family after a steady stream of bad luck brings them to the time and place of the story.
After only a half dozen films to his credit, new director Mendoza is cutting a wide swath with major awards. He garnered a 2008 Cannes Golden Palm nomination for this film.
The head of the Pineda clan is Nanay Flor played in a simmering performance by Gina Pareño. Nanay runs the business in the traditional old-world sense; she is master, dictator, judge, jury and executioner of the theatre. The movie house is her palace but there is trouble afoot as she learns the hard way that she is barely able to control what happens in her palace and has no control at all once she leaves her kingdom.
Pareño brings real clout to her role as the grand dame of family slowing losing her power but far too proud to admit it. She is obsessed with a law suit against her husband over a point of pride for which the rest of her family has no sympathy. She is sinking the family ship while suing for docking position but the institution forbids her giving up.
Most of the screen time goes to Jacklyn Jose as Nayda, Nanay Flor’s dutiful daughter and unwilling heir apparent to the alpha female position. Nayda is caught in a dilemma; she is a registered nurse who could be a sophisticate but instead is running the family business out of guilt. She is an unwilling wife of a dimwit husband and the unwilling chief cook and bottle washer of an enterprise that is literally crumbling around her head.
The soundtrack of the film is almost completely devoid of music. Instead it consists of the urban white noise of traffic sounds; engines, exhausts, horns and the cries of the people fighting their way through the tightly packed commercial district. The level of this sound track goes up and down, regulating the tension and points of crisis that occur inside the theatre. Occasionally the familiar but exaggerated sound of the ancient film projector, the thudding, click-click-click we all know so well, is brought up under the traffic noise. This brings a subtle assembly-line cyber pattern up through the traffic noise. The result is eerie.
The cinematography is almost all hand-held in the indie tradition of cinema verite’. The camera follows the characters through the smallest of openings into the off-limits closets and cupboards of the ancient, filthy, crumbling movie house. The pace is brisk, either walking fast or outright running. The pace of the movement matches the pace of the speaking and the soundtrack comes up behind the anxious action with that traffic, threatening to overrun the ruins of the theatre when the family enterprise finally breathes its last.
This film contains explicit sexual scenes of both heterosexual and homosexual intercourse as well as some very real material regarding malfunctioning bodily functions and malfunctioning waste disposal systems. In terms of grinding third world poverty set in the sweltering confines of a cheap porn theatre on an extra dirty street in a seedy city, it is hard to recommend this as a “first date” film. The title “Serbis” translates to “service” in English, a reference to the “service boys” who incessantly promote fast, anonymous, unapologetic sex to every passer-by. The few women who frequent the interior of the theater are little different.
But what sets the film apart is the dual nature of sexual service and service to one’s legacy---the only thing that binds Nayda to the theatre and Nanay to her family. Without this cohesion there would be no life at all.
Great performances by both Gina Pareño and Jacklyn Jose who between them claim dozens of top Philippine awards (FAMAS / Gawad Urian) and nominations and nearly two hundred screen credits. Also very good supporting performances by the 20-something generation of the family, beset with enough angst to fill an entire Midwest city.
USA
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