SERBIS (SERVICE)
Philippines, 2008, 93 minutes, Colour.
Gina Preno, Jaclyn Jose, Julio Diaz, Coco Martin, Kristofer King.
Directed by Brillante Mendoza.
Just another day in a struggling neighbourhood of Manila – or is it? Is this yet another Filipino look at squalid surroundings and squalid aspects of life in these surroundings showing both a financial poverty and a spiritual poverty? Yes, but presented by Brillante Mendoza who has become a rising director in recent years, ranging from gay massage in Masahista to social questions in Foster Child and local thieves and pickpockets in Tirador.
Mendoza has a distinctive cinema style, using handheld cameras to follow his characters wherever they go – in this case up four storeys and down in a cinema building and through the corridors or out into the loud and busy streets. He immerses us in the life of his characters, sometimes slowing right down as we observe them paint, scrub or clean toilets in real time.
The location for this day is a decaying, rather grand old cinema that plays ‘adult films’ and is run by a family, or, rather, the matriarchs of the family. This day the strong grandmother goes to court to get justice against her husband who abandoned her and started another family. Her daughter does the practical management of the cinema as well as its café, helped by her nice but rather slow husband. They have a little son who goes to school and does well and then returns to wander round the building spying or working on his computer.
The practical work is done by two young men. The films shown are trashy sex movies. The venue, however, attracts a lot of gay men who use young prostitutes for ‘serbis’, the core meaning of the title. Mendoza has decided to portray some sex scenes quite bluntly.
Clearly, a 90 minute film can show only glimpses of a wide range of characters but Mendoza has done that, raising questions of poverty and its effect, questions of morality, especially in the context of a Filipino pious Catholicism which is seen in the statues and pictures, some passing nuns and a final Marian candlelight procession.
1.The work of Brillante Mendoza, his world acclaim in the mid-decade? His views of the Philippines? Struggle, poverty, financial, spirituality, the sex industry and trade, his preoccupations?
2.Manila, the city, the neighbourhood, the cinema and the streets, the traffic, the passers-by, the customers?
3.The cinema and its exteriors, the family cinema, the interiors, the café, the steps, box office, the corridors, the hall, the projection room, toilets, the private living area? The action within this context? The musical score?
4.The title, male prostitutes – and going beyond this kind of service to service of others?
5.Moral codes, the law, personal morality, societal morality? Marriage or not? Pregnancy? Thieves, the sex trade? The pornographic movies? People caught in this world? Audience assessment of the moral issues? The perspective of the director?
6.The camera style, the moving camera, keeping still in real time for certain events? The sound engineering and the noise of Manila?
7.The opening, Jewel, the shower, naked, the mirror, saying ‘I love you’ to herself, the tone, the statue of Mary, the nephew watching? Her mother making her change? Later, going to the court, dressed in black, taking over the box office, chasing her nephew? Her hopes and ambitions – caught up in this world?
8.The family situation, the mother going to court, paying the money against the father, the lawyer and his eating the breakfast and not paying, the family, Neyda and Jerome not wanting their father to go to jail? The mother sitting in the cinema, going to court? Her return, the loss of the case, her personal dignity, Jerome and his telling her that they did not want to disinherit? Alan and Merly and their relationship, the wedding? The bath, her dignity restored, coming down, her concern about the business and the collapse of the business?
9.Neyda, the practical management, supervising, instructing, cashing the cheque, borrowing money, her relationship to Lando, her son and going to school? Ronald and the graffiti? Her rubbing it out? The final look towards him and Lando seeing her? Marrying because she was pregnant? Her relationship with her mother, Alan and his jobs? Coping?
10.Alan, painting, cleaning, the boil (and Mendoza saying it was a literal pain in the ass)? His relationship with Merly, the sexual encounter, her pregnancy, fighting with Ronald? The day, delivering the spools, collecting the others? Painting over the graffiti? Lancing his boil? Packing and the decision to leave?
11.Ronald, his sexual activity, the projection room, the relationship with Neyda, the client?
12.Lando, work, slow-witted, the issue of the change to the student and wanting the correct change, his wife and his son?
13.The people who watched the films, the films and their provocative titles, the goat in the cinema and everybody giving chase?
14.The gay clientele, standing at the back, the prostitutes, offering serbis, the group’s arriving, the mother and her search for her son, the lewd behaviour, the lights coming up, everybody running?
15.The future, the family and its struggles, survival?
16.The people gathered for the Marian procession, the candles, the Hail Marys? The contrast with the cinema?
17.The finale, the boy sitting in the street, the sex trade – and the film burning?
