Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis in 2008 Cannes Film Festival
Filipino director Brillante “Dante” Mendoza’s film, Serbis has been officially invited to the official competition section of the 61st Cannes Film Festival in France from May 14 to 25.
This is only the third time for the Philippines to compete in Cannes. The first time was in 1980 with Brocka’s Jaguar and then in 1984 with Kapit sa Patalim, also by Brocka. Serbis is about a family living in a rundown moviehouse in Angeles City. The film stars veteran, multi-awarded actress Gina Pareño and talented newcomer Coco Martin. It will open in selected Metro Manila theaters on June 18.
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April 24th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
pwede ba akong magpa home servic kay coco martin?
April 24th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
pwede ba akong magpa home service kay coco martin?
April 24th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
2
April 25th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Indeed, Philippine movie industry is invaded by indie filmmakers. If not for them, we cannot make it to various film festivals abroad, specifically, the prestigious Cannes Filmfest.
Kudos, Brillante Mendoza. You’re such a great indie filmmaker.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Howard Feinstein, Screen Daily
Since he shifted from production design to directing with The Masseur (2005), a
static misfire about a gay massage parlor in the provinces of his native
Philippines, Mendoza has made up for lost time by cranking out four films since
(including one documentary), all low-budget, showing mastery in a variety of
genres. With Serbis (Service), his first feature with foreign (French) backing,
he has taken a giant step in the wrong direction, even if The Masseur’s numbing
stasis has been supplanted by an unpleasant, ADD-like dynamism. Just as he was
becoming the new darling of the festival circuit, Mendoza ’s rising star will
stall, at least temporarily, and the film’s commercial prospectes should be
muted.
The three features he made between The Masseur and Serbis focus on personal
relationships, whether tender or antagonistic, in the context of social issues
in the Philippines; yet Serbis fails to develop either front. Summer Heat
(2006) is a moving, leisurely-paced melodrama about the three obedient
daughters of an abusive old man who is a product of the culture’s rampant
machismo. Foster Child (2007) is a hybrid of a calm “woman’s film” – the bond
between a poor slum dweller and the child she raises temporarily for a wage –
and a documentary-like portrait of a large city. Slingshot (2007), on the other
hand, is fast-paced through and through, and feels like the best kind of
documentary, as it follows a gang of amoral teen toughs through wretched slums.
Serbis has little social value, except for the backdrop of economic hardship
that is endemic in the Philippines. The multiple characters are all members of
an extended family which runs and inhabits a fading four-storey “adults only”
cinema in a provincial city. While all have personal problems, most appear
hyperactive, running up and down the stairs or across hallways in their
cavernous cinema. For the first time Armando Lao, who had supervised Mendoza’s
earlier screenplays, has sole screenwriter credit. Might this have impacted the
vision of the director, who had previously written his own scripts? Did the
additional budget have a negative effect?
The most interesting member of the family is the striking Nanay Flor (Pareno),
whose legal case against her bigamist husband gets the plot off the ground. She
loses in court, but by film’s end regains her elegance. Yet the transformation
is incongruous with the grunge of this decaying movie house where gays and
straights service each other for cash – much of the backroom action feels
tacked on, as does the recurring nudity – and the films are cheesy at best.
The issues her offspring deal with – an unexpected pregnancy, an unrequited
crush, a buttocks boil that just won’t go away – appear trite, even lazy
scriptwise. Nanay Flor’s entire adult history has been altered by her spouse’s
infidelity, not to mention that the family faces losing their iffy source of
income (they have already lost two theaters).
Some of Mendoza’s trademark formal devices remain from his earlier work.
Ambient sound, particularly loud traffic noises, are always present, as they
are in Filipino urban life. When Alan (Martin), the son with the boil, runs
away at the end of the film, he passes a religious procession, but whereas this
sort of ritual is integrated in the filmmaker’s earlier work, here it feels
like a postscript. Strong, charismatic women, such as Nanay Flor and her
middle-aged daughter Nayda (Jose), do make their mark, as they frequently do in
the other works, a reflection of Filipino family life.
Yet events move too rapidly for the sentiment that Mendoza is generally so
expert in developing to have any opportunity to blossom here. Taiwanese
filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang already successfully mined this material in his ode
to the last days of a movie house, Goodbye, Dragon Inn. If you are looking for
The Last Picture Show, search elsewhere.