Recently dining on a menu of cinema that I can best describe as fibrous, I'm buoyed by the availability these days of the old and the new. At the dawn of my celluloid obsession, I relied on Melbourne arthouse cinemas like The Silver Screen, The Valhalla, and the Astor for my fix. Programming was the domain of an elite, adventurous few before cheap ownership of movies arrived in a VHS or Beta cassette. Now, forty years after home video's dawn, programming is personal.
In 2009, Filipino director Brilliante Mendoza's Kinatay earned a Cannes statue and some anger from critic Roger Ebert. His beef, shared by others, was that a movie featuring the protracted abuse of a woman had no business winning awards. Although Ebert originated "it's not what it's about, it's how it's about", he didn't apply it to Kinatay -- or maybe he did. The film centers on the kidnapping of a prostitute by corrupt cops; she owes money to one of them. They take her on a forty minute drive to the outskirts of Manila where she is raped and killed. Her body is then broken apart and thrown out the window on the drive back to the city. The infamous "rape" in the van is a myth. The woman is slapped and abused, but the serious abuse doesn't happen until she is tied to a bed in an old house at the end of the journey.
Although critics of the film want you to know that the film is unnecessarily exploitative, I want you to know that it is not. Its primary focus is a young rookie cop who is dragged into the whole messy affair. Short on cash, just married, and expected to feed several mouths, he accepts a part in this nocturnal mission and comes close to losing his soul in the process. When someone tosses him the head of the prostitute, we know and he knows there's no undoing what he's become part of.
Ebert's "...how it's about" is where I might meet him on even ground. The van journey is quite protracted and dark. We hear more than we see, and, theoretically, that's an effective approach, but director Mendoza lets the sequence run a little too long. Still, it's a powerful descent into moral decay, a spiral down the darkest human passages.
The dismemberment of the prostitute is relatively ghastly. The intercutting between the exercise itself and our hero's reaction is cleverly measured. There are one or two horror equivalents of the porno "cum shot" to satisfy enthusiasts of grotesque violence, and the resolution feels very natural.
Recommend with reservations (for some).
Recommend with reservations (for some).
Recommended without reservations is the same director's Serbis (aka Service), a grim, gritty, stark insight into the life of a family struggling to survive in Manila. Ironically, they run the "Family" cinema, a straight porn theater frequented by a mostly gay clientele. These folks, not unlike their counterparts elsewhere, use the picture palace's darkened nooks and crannies to suck, fuck, and be intimate, if only for a few moments.
The drama is driven purely by character decisions. The film is not heavily plotted or contrived. The family matriarch, Flor, is carrying such a colossal financial and emotional weight, she can barely walk. A scene in which she dresses down a relative for knocking up a local girl ends with her shedding tears of desperation.
Flor's nephews, the cinema's projectionists, live lives that parallel the clientele and the softcore shenanigans on the theater's screen. Sex, in fact, runs like a poisoned river through every cell of this drama, and leaves a sad, lingering odor. A fascinating aspect of the film is that a handful of sex scenes are hardcore. Though the film would not pass anybody's muster as a porn flick, these more graphic passages (gay and hetero blowjobs mostly) feel totally natural and essential in context.
Flor's nephews, the cinema's projectionists, live lives that parallel the clientele and the softcore shenanigans on the theater's screen. Sex, in fact, runs like a poisoned river through every cell of this drama, and leaves a sad, lingering odor. A fascinating aspect of the film is that a handful of sex scenes are hardcore. Though the film would not pass anybody's muster as a porn flick, these more graphic passages (gay and hetero blowjobs mostly) feel totally natural and essential in context.
There's no getting around the fact that the film feels Jodorowsky-inspired. The cinema setting could easily be a circus, the employees its trapeze artists and jugglers. When a frightened goat enters the cinema and trots into the light of a porno movie, it triggers a chase that would have delighted Jodorowsky or Fellini; its surrealism adds an extra level to an already densely layered cinematic soap opera.
Sticking to the theme of sex, I can't wrap up without expressing renewed admiration for the work of porno pioneer Alex de Renzy. The further modern porn moves away from real sex into something glib and cynical, the more I respect the stellar work of this talented auteur of desire.
In Babyface, a good-natured Lothario goes on the lam after bedding a gorgeous, underaged filly (the actress, 'Cuddles' Malone, wasn't underage during shooting, but for the sake of the story, she is, and looks it!). He ends up at a cathouse for men and spends his days servicing a variety of horny older women. For a porn flick, the plot is thicker than usual, the tech credits are excellent, and de Renzy's coverage is equal to any low budget flick. Unlike most of the hacks slaving away in porn these days, de Renzy was a real filmmaker; he knew how to shoot, direct, cut, and stage sex scenes and the stuff in between.
Babyface's sex scenes are volcanic because everybody's having such a good fuckin time -- the women are loving it, the men are loving it, and de Renzy offers a cornucopia of camera angles, sexual positions, and old-fashioned heat. It's not a damn blowjob marathon, my pet hate, and the ladies get sucked, licked, fucked, and brought to screaming orgasms. That's entertainment!!!
Apart from doing everything right for the first sixty minutes, de Renzy tops himself with a climactic "gangbang" in which the gorgeous, natural looking Christine Heller invites a number of men to share her body and passions while satisfying her deepest desires. The result is a piece of superb celluloid and living proof that, despite all the PC bullshit that is shoved in our faces by uptight morons, a confident women can enjoy having sex with multiple men on her own terms -- she's not being abused, she's not being "forced", and she's not being exploited; she's simply expressing being human without a shred of "guilt".
Alex de Renzy's pornography has always acknowledged the complexity of sex while making an effort to shut out the hypocrisy surrounding it. What's not to like about that? A toast to you, Alex!
In Babyface, a good-natured Lothario goes on the lam after bedding a gorgeous, underaged filly (the actress, 'Cuddles' Malone, wasn't underage during shooting, but for the sake of the story, she is, and looks it!). He ends up at a cathouse for men and spends his days servicing a variety of horny older women. For a porn flick, the plot is thicker than usual, the tech credits are excellent, and de Renzy's coverage is equal to any low budget flick. Unlike most of the hacks slaving away in porn these days, de Renzy was a real filmmaker; he knew how to shoot, direct, cut, and stage sex scenes and the stuff in between.
Babyface's sex scenes are volcanic because everybody's having such a good fuckin time -- the women are loving it, the men are loving it, and de Renzy offers a cornucopia of camera angles, sexual positions, and old-fashioned heat. It's not a damn blowjob marathon, my pet hate, and the ladies get sucked, licked, fucked, and brought to screaming orgasms. That's entertainment!!!
Apart from doing everything right for the first sixty minutes, de Renzy tops himself with a climactic "gangbang" in which the gorgeous, natural looking Christine Heller invites a number of men to share her body and passions while satisfying her deepest desires. The result is a piece of superb celluloid and living proof that, despite all the PC bullshit that is shoved in our faces by uptight morons, a confident women can enjoy having sex with multiple men on her own terms -- she's not being abused, she's not being "forced", and she's not being exploited; she's simply expressing being human without a shred of "guilt".
