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Tokyo Decadence
TIFF Review: SERBIS
Posted by Michael Guillen at 8:06pm.
Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Toronto Film Festival 2008.
Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis (Service) joins the dilapidated narratives of Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn and Jacques Nolot’s La Chatte à deux têtes (Porn Theatre), wherein the architecture of better days succumbs to poverty’s desperate immoralities and perversities. It’s a labyrinthine sojourn that serves as an allegorical deconstruction of contemporary Philippines where the family unit is tentatively held together by strong women and constantly threatened by weak men. Three generations of women preen in front of mirrors, applying lipstick, hoping to use wiles to inspire if not govern their men who—despite the best feminine intentions—squander away the family’s resources leading the theatre to ruin.
The Pineda family operate a run-down movie house—named The Family, no less—which shows daily sexy double-feature films. Though not entirely successful in its imitative critique, Serbis does an adequate job of showing that sex sells everything even if real sex is not quite as sexy as cinematic sex. When push comes to shove, however, it’s the antics in the darkened theater of Serbis that burn up the screen. My favorite scene: a goat runs loose in the theatre aisles, mocking the saturnalia.
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Reader Comments
IEDParty 09/07/2008 @ 7:19am
Oh, yuck.
This ‘ crime against humanity ‘ on celluloid, again ?
IEDParty 09/07/2008 @ 7:29am
Fuck Brilliante Mendoza. FUCK HIM.
Feeding off the bullshit of the tyranny, and the misery its done onto the Filipinos. Gutless depraved piece of shit. Emasculate yo’self, motherfucker.
I was sayin’ the film is THE crime against humanity, not just purportedly about it - & fucking ‘ hah hah ‘ to that, yes. Case I wasn’t clear last time