A hectic day in the life of ‘The Family Theatre’, a Filipino porn palace. Social realism: raw, real and in your face. “Serbis may be a raunch-fest, but it’s also a mind-trip – a raunch-fest with ideas.” — Village Voice
The melodramatic mayhem this Filipino filmmaker drums up is completely his own... Serbis bristles with live-wire intensity.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2009
Serbis 2008
Service
Brillante Mendoza has established himself as an astoundingly prolific new phenomenon in Filipino cinema, serving raw, pumped up social realism with exhibitionist verve. This gleefully lubricious account of a hectic day in the life of a hetero-porn palace is his sixth feature in three years. The action ranges through the foyers, stairways, derelict chambers and indoor/outdoor spaces of a dilapidated former cinema, going by the name ‘The Family Theatre’. Now it's frequented by hustlers, cruising gay men and the odd stray goat, but it's still a family affair, a frantically dysfunctional one, overseen by a formidable matriarch who harbours enough grievances to fuel a soap opera. She's a tower of wounded authority, but she's not about to let go of this disreputable retreat she and her clan call home. Mendoza, it's clear, knows the feeling. — BG
“Serbis may be a raunch-fest, but it's also a mind-trip – a raunch-fest with ideas.” — J. Hoberman, Village Voice