Serbis (2008, Philippines)

Brillante Mendoza follows last year's Foster Child and Slingshot with the story of an epically dysfunctional family inspired, he says, by a real one. The Pineda family operates a decrepit cinema (called "Family") in a provincial Filipino town, screening tenth-run double bills of softcore sex movies. They also live on the premises.

The matriarch Nanay Flor (Gina Pareno, The Bet Collector) is suing her bigamous husband for support and expecting the court's decision any time now. She's helped with the running of the cinema by five younger people: her daughter and son-in-law, her adopted daughter, and two nephews, one of whom is shirking his responsibilities to a pregnant girlfriend. Meanwhile the cinema itself attracts few but men looking for male and transvestite hookers, who ply their trade in the lobby and on the stairs.

The title Serbis is Tagalog slang for "service"--as in a rent-boy "servicing" a client, but also as in a family's service to its members (and vice versa) and an individual's service to a country (and vice versa). That's right, metaphors are in play: this run-down, leaky movie theatre is a microcosm of larger social and generational realities, maybe even political ones. But as you'd expect from Mendoza's previous films, the intellectual subtext never gets in the way of the wonderfully vivid depiction of life in all its messiness. It's all here: hollow laughter, vindictive acts of cruelty, bitter tears, faulty plumbing--and a very painful boil on a very sensitive part of the bod.

There is an official trailer on youtube but it throws no light on the content of the film, except to suggest that it is going to be heavy going.

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