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Service
Written by Ryan Katona
Thursday, 11 March 2010   
Service
Movie:
 
 5.0
Picture:
 
 3.0
Sound:
 
 2.0
Extras:
 
 1.0
Score:
 
 3.0
Director(s): Brillante Ma. Mendoza
Writer(s): Armando Lao
Starring: Gina Pareno
Genre: Foreign
Release Date: March 09, 2010
Rated: NR
List Price: DVD - $24.98
Amazon:
Service takes place in a dingy, run-down movie theater that looks better suited for demolition than an extreme makeover. It looks as if the structure started getting vandalized before it was even finished. We never really get a full view of the building, but we do get to see various halls and rooms. The camera has a habit of following behind a character as he or she walks through the cinema. I kept a pretty good eye on the clock to add up the total amount of time spent on the silent, boring, uneventful tracking shots that took place: about eight minutes. That’s eight minutes of an eighty-five-minute-long movie; eight minutes without dialogue or action…just walking. Ironically, I wouldn’t have been bored enough to time these needless walking scenes if I hadn’t been so bored by them in the first place.

But the upside to the incredible amount of walking the characters do is that we get to see the expansive theater itself. Service invokes a feeling of despair, and a lot of that is due to the look of the joint. It looks like a horrid place to watch a movie, not that any of the patrons are actually watching; the sparse crowd that does show up is there for sex-soliciting purposes. While a movie plays, one person will turn to another, and ask “service?” Then come the negotiations. Then comes the knocking of boots.

What seems like an atrocious place to watch a movie must be a doubly atrocious place to live. The Pineda family does this, and with an understandable amount of dysfunction, considering their surroundings and circumstances. Comprised of a few generations, the Pineda family owns, operates, and lives within the cinema. They’re aware of the seediness that goes on inside the auditorium when the lights go off, but no one asks about it or does anything: a symbiotic relationship has formed between the theater and its customers.

In what would be best described as a “slice of life,” we get to be familiar with a few of the Pinedas, along with the burdens they bear, over the duration of one day. A few of the several: Nanay Flor, the matriarch who is going through a painful divorce trial; Nayda, Nanay’s daughter who, for lack of a better word, manages the cinema and its employees/her family; and young Alan, who unintentionally gets his girlfriend pregnant. Be prepared for the lack of any discernible beginnings, middles, or ends to each individual narrative. What we’re really in store for is a day in the life of a family who owns and operates a movie theater that is essentially overrun by predominantly gay sex solicitors. I at least hope the concession prices are reasonable.

The sex is explicit. There isn’t a lot of it, but what there is of it is definitely not for the prudish. What the nudity and sex added to the story is unclear. It’s not the way I prefer to watch a movie. Seeing an explicit two- or three-minute-long scene of a guy receiving oral sex not only adds nothing to the story, but has the ability to take the audience right out of it. The reasoning behind including all the sex and nudity will be lost on some, but because of sex being such a tenacious theme throughout the movie, others will find it pitch-perfect.

The production quality is bad. The director did a good job of immersing the theater and its employees in an urban jungle, mainly using the ambient sounds of traffic and yelling outside. It’s a shame though that there were many times the actors’ voices were bordering inaudible. If there had been no subtitles, the dialogue would have been swallowed up by the outside sounds completely.

It’s an overstatement to say the director had no intention of caring whether or not the audience was comfortable. It’s commendable to be so engrossed in your own vision that you do not falter or spare the audience the crude, and at times, ghastly sights you feel should be in the movie you’re creating. A filmmaker’s intention is important, and what’s even more important is to remember that fact while watching a movie like Service. The story lacks traditional elements, the camera work leaves a lot to be desired, and the director is in no rush to have his audience connect with his characters, or even to entertain his audience. But from the looks of it, that’s what he was going for, and he succeeded with flying colors.

DVD Bonus Features

Sadly, there are no extras on the DVD.