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
Directed by Mel Chionglo; written (in Filipino, with English subtitles) by Ricardo Lee; director of photography, George Tutanes; edited by Jess Navarro; music by Nonong Buenoamino; production designer, Edgar Martin Littaua; produced by Richard Wong Tang; released by First Run Features. At Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 115 minutes. This film is not rated. WITH: Alex Del Rosario (Joel), Gandong Cervantes (Dennis), Lawrence David (Sonny), Perla Bautista (Mother), Soxy Topacio (Dominic) and R. S. Francisco (Michelle).
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Director: C. Jay Cox
