Service (film)

Service (Tagalog: Serbis) is a 2008 Filipino independent drama film directed by Brillante Mendoza and stars Gina Pareño as the matriarch of the Pineda family who owns a porn cinema in Angeles City, Pampanga. The film competed for the Palme d'Or in the main competition at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It is also the first Filipino film to compete at the main competition in Cannes, since Lino Brocka's Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim in 1984.^[2]

Plot

Service is a drama that follows the travails of the Pineda family in the Filipino city of Angeles. Bigamy, unwanted pregnancy, possible incest and bothersome skin irritations are all part of their daily challenges, but the real "star" of the show is an enormous, dilapidated movie theater that doubles as family business and living space. At one time a prestige establishment, the theater now runs porn double bills and serves as a meeting ground for hustlers of every conceivable persuasion. The film captures the sordid, fetid atmosphere, interweaving various family subplots with the comings and goings of customers, thieves and even a runaway goat while enveloping the viewer in a maelstrom of sound, noise and continuous motion.

Cast

• Gina Pareño as Nanay Flor
• Jaclyn Jose as Nayda
• Julio Diaz as Lando
• Kristoffer King as Ronald
• Mercedes Cabral as Merly
• Coco Martin as Alan
• Dan Alvaro as Jerome

Release

Critical response

Service caused a stir in the Philippines with its loud ambient noise and its graphic depiction of sex and nudity. Submitted to the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board for public exhibition in 2008, the movie survived with two major cuts to sex scenes and was rated an R18.

Such was the advance international buzz of the film that it was invited to compete at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival, being the 3rd overall entry from the Philippines (following the films of director Lino Brocka, Jaguar and Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim). Its premiere at the festival was marked by the walking out of several veteran film critics who protested Mendoza's version of "misery porn."

On 30 January 2009, the film premiered in New York. Writing for the New York Times, its chief film critic Manohla Dargis described the film: "The heavenly bodies that populate our films bring their own pleasures ... alighting onscreen as if from a dream. But the bodies in [‘Serbis’], which received little love at the 2008 Cannes, are not heaven-sent, but neither are they puppets in a contrived nightmare. Rather, they lust, sweat, desire and struggle with the ferocious truth." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Service two and a half out of four stars, stating that "[i]f you see only one art film this month, this shouldn't be the one. If you see one every week, you might admire it."^[3]

Accolades

References

External links

• Serbis at the Internet Movie Database
• Service at AllMovie
• Serbis at Box Office Mojo
• Service at Metacritic
• Serbis at Rotten Tomatoes
• Film Review: 'Serbis' in Hollywood Reporter
• Mixed Reviews of Serbis in Cannes
• New York Times film review accessed on 31 January 2009