The outrageous theatre of Brillante Mendoza. By STEVE GARDEN.

IT APPEARS that Brillante Mendoza is the hot new name in world cinema. The 49-year old Filipino took out the Best Director prize at Cannes in May for his most recent film, Kinatay, his eighth feature in just four years! His 2008 film Serbis (Service) is nothing if not challenging – it almost dares you to fault it. One might be tempted to cite Mendoza’s liberal use of art-film clichés (agitated and prowling hand-held camera work; long close-to-the-shoulder travelling shots; unsimulated sex scenes;) as evidence of a calculated appeal to the art-house and festival circuits, if it wasn’t for the fact that the film is so palpably convincing.

There are times when Mendoza seems to deliberately bait the viewer, as in the opening scene where a naked teenager dries herself by a mirror as the camera perpetually scans her body. That this turns out to be the point-of-view of someone unseen doesn’t quite justify what appears to be an exploitative excuse for a perv, but as we get further into this gritty, thought-provoking film, the opening scene has more to say to (and possibly about) the viewer. There are lots of bodies in Serbis, but they are real, unadorned and honest, and speak the truth about what it is to be human – and not only in the heavily Catholicised poverty of the Philippines.

Serbis is a film about disintegration, of retaining some semblance of personal value and sense of purpose when everything is falling apart. The acting is exceptional: as lived-in and believable as the setting – a rundown movie theatre (with as dominating a presence as any character in the film) that still operates in Angeles City today, playing the same sort of fare to the same kinds of people that convincingly populate the film. Gina Pareño (as Nanay Flor, the aging matriarch who may have been a screen star in her day) and Jaclyn Jose (as Nayda) are especially good as women struggling to hold things together while trying to make sense of life as it steadily trickles away. Their men are pointedly absent or ineffective, especially Nanay’s philandering husband who casts a huge shadow over the film. Serbis is not for the prudish, but those with perception and empathy are sure to be rewarded.