Another Thought in Mind | Serbis

I have this friend that keeps on persuading me to watch this film because she told me that it was a big hit in Cannes Film Festival. Then unexpectedly, we were given the chance to watch it on our cinema class.

Serbis is a film directed by Brillante Mendoza. The film details a day in the life of a family, who owned a movie theater that shows soft pornographic films to hustlers servicing gay men inside the theater’s dark areas. I think the title “Serbis” pertains to the “service boys” who offers sex to every passer-by.

There were different stories in the film, like the one of Nayda, who operates the movie theater and deals with the problem of her family; the real owner of the movie theater who is Nanay Flor, the mother of Nayda; Alan, who got her girlfriend pregnant; and many more…

I noticed in the film that the name of the movie theater is “Family,” then as I came to realize, the family owns the movie theater. I’m not just sure if they named it that way or it is already named like that even before.

In the film, a lot of tracking shots were used to follow the characters. It also showed the different parts of the movie theater. This film contains explicit sexual scenes of both heterosexual and homosexual intercourse.

I admire the actors especially Jacklyn Jose as Nayda and Gina Pareno as Nanay Flor because they justified their role perfectly.

I actually expected too much from this film. But it didn’t meet my expectations. The film started with a boom then it fades away in the end.

Honestly, the shakiness of the camera made me dizzy and made it for me harder to focus on the story. Maybe the reason for the confusion and dizzy movements in the film is about the family’s endless problems in their lives.

It ended with the burning scene appearing in the screen that consumed the whole screen. It also left us clueless of what happened to the rest of the characters.

So, yeah! This is what I feel and how I interpret the film “Serbis.”