sibak_rvw

SIBAK
1994 - 100 min. - Feature - Color
AKA - Midnight Dancers
Director - Mel Chionglo

Genre / Type - Drama, Gay & Lesbian Films, Urban Drama, Erotic Drama
Keywords - brother, prostitute/prostitution, poverty, homosexual, lover, transvestite
Tones - Matter-of-Fact, Reflective, Deliberate
Produced by - Tangent Films

Cast

Ryan Aristorenas
Perla Bautista
Noni Buencamino
Richard Cassity
Gandong Cervantes
Luis Cortez
Lawrence David
Alex Del Rosario
Gino Paul Guzman
Leonard Manalanson
John Mendoza
Cherry Pie Picache
Danny Ramos

Plot Synopsis

Manila, in the Philippines, has a thriving and lively gay subculture which is strongly influenced by the pervasive poverty of the islands. In this story, three brothers from the island of Cebu work in that world as sibak, sometimes referred to as "macho dancers," but better described as hustlers, or male prostitutes.They have a variety of ways of reacting to their profession: the oldest (only 21) juggles relationships with his wife and his male lover, the youngest, Sonny, has a transvestite lover. Dennis, the middle brother, likes the wild scene of pick-ups, and hasn't settled in with anybody. The colorful gay world of Manila livens up the almost documentary-style rendering of the daily lives of these men and their families, and the story comes to a sudden, dramatic conclusion.

Reviews

STEPHEN HOLDEN
The New York Times
July 28, 1995, Friday

Late in "Midnight Dancers," Mel Chionglo's sprawling drama of three brothers caught up in Manila's subculture of male prostitution, the youngest brother, Sonny (Lawrence David), stops for a moment to reflect on the spiritual cost of selling one's body to strangers night after night.

"We lost something," says the character, who with his baby-faced pout looks barely 18. "I don't know what, but something, somehow is lost."

"Midnight Dancers," which opens today at the Cinema Village, shows not only what is lost but what is gained. Sonny and his older brothers, Dennis (Gandong Cervantes) and Joel (Alex Del Rosario) work as go-go boys in a sleazy sex emporium called the Club Exotica whose upstairs cubicles are reserved for paid assignations.

Through prostitution, the boys are able to keep their closely knit family from starving. And the easy money and tinselly "stardom" at the Club Exotica exert their own seductive glamour. At the same time, the brothers, who think of themselves as essentially heterosexual, are objects of scorn in their impoverished neighborhood. The Club Exotica is periodically raided by the police. And as Sonny observes, something is lost. For lack of a better term, that something might be called a healthy perspective on one's place in the world.

Although the camera spends a lot of time at the club ogling nubile dancers as they go through their often ridiculous-looking routines, "Midnight Dancers" is by no means an exploitation film. With its pungent scenes of life in Manila's slums and its portrait of a family struggling to survive, it might be described as a Filipino answer to Luchino Visconti's late Neo-Realist epic "Rocco and His Brothers." Its detailed picture of the Club Exotica, which is run by a bossy male madam named Dominic (Soxy Topacio), whom everyone calls Mommy, is also very convincing.

Although the film looks at the world primarily through the eyes of the initially innocent Sonny, its portraits of his two older brothers are more than mere sketches. Dennis graduates from the club into a seasoned streetwalker who hangs out with a gang specializing in drugs and car theft. Joel carries on simultaneous relationships with a common-law wife and an abjectly devoted gay lover who helps him support his family. Sonny's first serious lover, Michelle (R. S. Francisco), is a drag queen who works at the Club Exotica.

Although the boys' mother (Perla Bautista) doesn't approve of her sons' occupation, she tolerates it because it pays the bills.

Underneath its gritty realism and unblinkingly blase view of commercial sex, "Midnight Dancers" is a sentimental family drama whose rosiness at times strains credibility. The three brothers are unwaveringly loyal and mutually supportive, and Joel's bisexual triangle is to all appearances a nearly idyllic arrangement. When, near the end, the movie turns abruptly melodramatic, it loses its bearings, and the action scenes seem crude and perfunctory. But for all its flaws, which are large and glaring, "Midnight Dancers" is a movie with a big heart and a large vision. MIDNIGHT DANCERS

BRIAN WEBSTER
Apollo Guide
Apollo Score: 41

Weaned on slick Hollywood productions, many of us have difficulty watching films with lower production standards - even if they have something worthwhile to say. However, in the case of Midnight Dancers, this isn't an issue, as this film doesn't have anything worthwhile to tell us. It's an embarrassing production with numerous amateurish elements that draw laughs the filmmakers would never have wanted. It's an example of why it would be nice if quality films were being made for all segments of society - this is a laughably weak production that only has an audience because there's a dearth of capably made gay-themed films.

The Filipino production is about three brothers, Joel, Dennis and Sonny, who work in a Manila gay club as dancers and prostitutes. Joel has been in the business for a long time, and is ready to quit. Dennis is entangled with violent thugs, and is constantly on the edge of big trouble. Sonny is the youngster, and he gets drawn into the business against his mother's wishes and his own aspirations. But the money is good, and the club seems to be one big happy family. But this doesn't last, and the brothers eventually find themselves face-to-face with Dennis' enemies.

A great deal of the film is devoted to young, smooth-chested men swivelling their hips in the club, dressed only in briefs. Scene after scene shows the same thing - the young men dance (many with little skill), the audience gapes at them, and then someone takes a customer upstairs for sex. Those who are fascinated by scantily clad young men dancing slowly and badly will likely enjoy these scenes, but nobody else. They just go on and on.

The rest of the film is even worse. The dialogue is weak and the action scenes are of the quality you and your friends might have performed when you were a kid. Horribly choreographed fight scenes feature atrocious sound dubbing and more punches that don't look like real punches than you've ever seen in a single film. If there was only one brief scene like this, it would be excusable - low budget films can't always afford the expertise to pull off a real-looking fight scene - but the second half of the film features several laughable fights that completely wipe away any credibility the movie might have had left at that point.

There's no great social commentary here, and those thinking this is a gay-friendly movie might be surprised to hear lines like, "I'm not gay, I'm a man," uttered near the beginning of the film. Yes there are a couple of gay sex scenes, but they are not well filmed and are less explicit than you might think, considering that this film was banned in the Phillipines.

If gay-themed films were made in the numbers and of the quality of mainstream cinema, then Midnight Dancers would have disappeared immediately after its 1994 release. There might be few films covering this subject matter, but that doesn't excuse shoddy filmmaking.

EDWARD GUTHMANN
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Critic
Friday, October 27, 1995

MIDNIGHT DANCERS: Melodrama. Starring Lawrence David, Alex Del Rosario and Gandong Cervantes. Directed by Mel Chionglo. (Not rated. 115 minutes. In Tagalog with English subtitles. At the Castro through Tuesday and the UC Theater in Berkeley through November 7.)

Cheerfully tawdry and hysterically funny without wanting to be, ``Midnight Dancers'' (opening today at the Castro) is the kind of movie that threatens to give gay cinema a bad name -- a steamy potboiler with bad dialogue, low production values and yards of flesh.
Vacillating between schmaltz and smut, Philippine director Mel Chionglo delivers a family melodrama, set in Manila, about three brothers who work as dancers/call boys at a seedy gay bar. When he isn't fixing his camera on undulating, over-oiled rent boys in triangular briefs, Chionglo shows the impact of the young mens' profession on their doting, lower-class mother (Perla Bautista).

But don't let the sturm-und-drang distract you: For all its efforts to make a statement about the ruptured Philippine economy and its trickle-down effect on the morals of the common folk, ``Midnight Dancers'' is basically a cheap pretext for leering looks at buffed bodies on the slab.

Riding that thin rail between junk cinema and flat-out camp, ``Midnight Dancers'' could be the Third World's answer to ``Showgirls'' -- a cautionary tale about the snake pits of show biz that revels in the sleaze it pretends to judge.

The brothers are Dennis (Gandong Cervantes), a wild seed who expands his income by hooking on the streets; oldest brother Joel (Alex Del Rosario), who recently won the ``Mr. Macho Dancer'' title and manages to juggle a gay lover, a wife and a kid; and Sonny (Lawrence David), the youngest and most naive.

Despite his mother's wish that he return to school, wide-eyed Sonny follows his brothers' lead into the world of pelvic thrusts, learns a glossary of whorehouse terms (to ``sing'' means to engage in fellatio), gets on-the-spot training as a dancer (``Let your libido shine on your face'') and takes a transvestite lover.

``This is your home away from home,'' announces ``Mommy'' (Soxy Topacio), the club's manager and resident pimp. A pudgy, middle-aged queen with bug eyes and Richard Simmons mannerisms -- a gay Stepin Fetchit -- Mommy prides himself on having an eye for talent and a history of elevating deserving youth from the gutter.

Chionglo and screenwriter Richard Lee toss in a police raid, gang fights, an orphaned urchin who's taken in by the boys' mother, the career dreams of Joel's wife and a chunk of histrionics involving the boys' philandering stepfather and his shrewish girlfriend (``Your sons are prostitutes!'' she screams at Mom).

By taking a frank, mostly non judgmental look at underclass gays in modern Manila, ``Midnight Dancers'' may be a step forward for Philippine cinema.

Chionglo undercuts his noble intentions, however, with his taste for tack, cheese and sleaze, and packages his ``Dancers'' with a cheap, glossy sheen.