macho_dancer

MACHO DANCER
1988 - 136 min. - Feature - Color
Director - Lino Brocka

Genre / Type - Drama, Gay & Lesbian Films
Keywords - prostitute/prostitution, city, country-boy, decadence, murder, family, homosexual, investigation, love, nudity, sex, sexual-deviation, underworld
Themes - Police Corruption, Drug Trade, Prostitutes
Tones - Sexual, Gritty, Tense, Atmospheric
Set In - Manila, Philippines, city
Produced by - Special People Productions

Cast

Alan Paule -Pol
Daniel Fernando -Noel
Jaclyn Jose -Bambi
Princess Punzalan -Pining
William Lorenzo -Dennis
Bobby Samo -Greg
Charlie Catalla -Mama Charlie
Joel Lamangan -Mother
Johnny Vicar -Kid
Anthony Taylor -The Manager
Lucita Soriano -The Mother
Timothy Diwa -Rolly
Angelo Miguel -Jun
Ronald Mendoza -Customer

Plot Synopsis

Paul is a rural Filipino who travels to Manila after his gay American GI lover leaves the Philippines. He takes a job as a dancer but quickly becomes a male prostitute in order to survive. The seamy, squalid barrio is overseen by the violent, corrupt cop known as "The Kid." Paul and his roommate Noel short change The Kid on some drug money in hopes of rescuing Paul's sister from the brothel. Bambi is a pretty prostitute who helps the duo and provides Paul with his first heterosexual experience. She saves Paul from a savage beating by The Kid. The feature contains nudity and several homosexual encounters.

Awards

1989 Gawad Urian Awards
Best Actor - Daniel Fernando
Best Supporting Actress - Jaclyn Jose

Reviews

Mark Adnum
Outrate.net

Filipino censors hacked Macho Dancer to pieces before its domestic release, removing sexually explicit scenes. Since this must have left a very short film with at least two-thirds of its scenes missing, we can all be thankful that a print was smuggled out of the Philippines and is now housed in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.

This is an extremely powerful and emotionally impacting film which has a quiet reputation but which deserves some kind of revival in the form, maybe, of retrospetive showings at gay and lesbian film festivals, most of which certainly have room for more meaningful queer world cinema. Instead of arty camera tricks and quirky editing cuts, director Lino Brocka has used a very straightforward, almost documentary style approach. Scenes are simply filmed, one chronological event follows another, and the movie was shot on the streets of red-light Manila. Pol (Alan Paule) is a rural Philippino who supports his family by being the lover of a visiting American GIs. He's lured to Manila by the promise of more glamorous prostitution, and more money and there he meets Noel (Daniel Fernando) another country boy who's become an experienced "Macho Dancer" who gyrates on stage with other near-nude guys at various gay-for-pay sex clubs. For a couple of American dollars, tourists or ex-pats can take the guy of their choice. Drug dealing, petty crime and crooked cops are part of the scene. In the simple, melodramatic plot that follows, Pol falls in love with Bambi (Jacklyn Jose) a vivacious hooker from the girlie bars. Noel's sister Pining (Princess Punzalan) has also fled rural poverty only to land in a prison-like Manila brothel, and apart from finding new ways to earn big bucks, such as starring in gay-porn videos, Pol and Noel hatch a plan to break her free.
Like Mandragora and unlike, say, K Hole, Macho Dancer is a brutally confronting film about people who move from the poorest parts of developing countries to the corrupt, drug-soaked corners of the big city and who provide sex for money because they have no other income-earning option. They get taken for rides by all and sundry and put up with appalling conditions at home and at work. Addictions, diseases,assaults and hunger are daily hazards and take the lives of many. Others see their souls starve to death while they're chained to a brothel bed paying off a relative's debt to a crime lord.

Great acting is the order of the day, with Jose and Fernando rewarded with the Filipino Oscar, the Gawad Urian, for their performances. A scene where Noel, sobbing in the embrace of Pol, briefly tries to kiss his surprised friend on the lips, is a standout. The film is heartbreaking and unrelenting and it's difficult to watch at times. Brocka, who died in a car accident in 1991, was prolific, and the Philippines' most celebrated film maker. He made several movies similar to Macho Dancer, such as Manila: Into the Claws of Darkness, which looked at a rural boy who rescues his sister from imprisonment in a Manila brothel. Despite working under the eye of the Marcos dictatorship, Brocka was able to make dozens of highly critical films about the plight of Manila's poor.

Personally, I find the go-go bar rituals bizarre. The undulating, hair-preening bicep-flexing choreography is decidely unsexy to me while the numbers on the underpants and the fat, old white men enjoying the attention of groups of hungry working boys creates a very purgatorial atmosphere that sends me running for the door. On the other hand, I find the whole thing grotesque and transfixing. Brocka, too, was apparently fascinated and repelled by the go-go scene and the impassive, almost casual style of Macho Dancer suggests that while his felt for the boys, he never really knew what to think.

CARYN JAMES
The New York Times
Published: March 16, 1990, Friday

LEAD: ''Macho Dancer'' wants to be a sexy homosexual film and to comment about social conditions in the Philippines at the same time. But before long it's easy to discover the true interests of the director, Lino Brocka.

''Macho Dancer'' wants to be a sexy homosexual film and to comment about social conditions in the Philippines at the same time. But before long it's easy to discover the true interests of the director, Lino Brocka.

A young man, apparently forced into prostitution by his family's poverty, learns to dance in a gay bar in Manila. This gives Mr. Brocka the opportunity to linger on one of the tackiest dance routines ever invented. Two men soap and bathe each other, while bubbles float through the air. This is a dance Lawrence Welk never dreamed of, though the easy-listening music in the background might have made him comfortable. Mr. Brocka films this scene lovingly, not once but three times, the last in front of Christmas decorations.

A prolific and respected director of both political and commercial films, Mr. Brocka was a highly visible opponent of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, and more recently has been vocal in charging the Aquino Government with repression. But his political reputation can't save ''Macho Dancer'' from the charge that it is a soft-core sex film masquerading as a political statement. The badly acted, horribly edited film, which opens today at the Bleecker Street Cinema, has no evident social conscience and no point of view beyond the lust for soap bubbles.

A Different Kind Of Two-Step