At its best, Brillante Mendoza's Serbis (Centerstage Productions, Swift Productions, 2008) is a vibrant slice of life that establishes the theater as a living organism nurturing a society of outcasts. More than just a movie palace, the theater also serves as home for the family that runs it, with tiny, jury-rigged spaces scattered throughout its four floors. Three generations of the family live in the theater and the atmosphere has clearly affected the children, including Jewel (Roxane Jordan), a young woman striking erotic poses in the opening shot and Ronald (Kristofer King), a projectionist getting head from a tranny hooker. The matriarch Nanay Flor, a tough-willed woman played by Gina Pareño, out of the picture much of the time is wrapped up in a bigamy suit against her husband that's dividing the family in half. In the meantime, her daughter Nayda (Jaclyn Jose) minds the fort, presiding over the business while tending to other matters, like cousin Alan (Coco Martin) who's trying to dodge his pregnant girlfriend. But Serbis also has a three-dimensional vividness that makes it come alive. Although Mendoza didn't care to resolve all of the many subplots, the film gives a complete picture of a family, a business, and a city in disarray, and its looming fallout.
Anyone who saw Serbis theatrically will know that it features a rather soft, often diffused image and that continues with this latest high definition release. The opening sequence looks distressingly soft, while not mind-blowingly sharp, it is certainly a major step up from the old DVD release. Fine detail is best in close-ups, as is to be expected, but some of the establishing shots of the theater and its inhabitants pop rather nicely, all things considered. Grain structure is also well intact and in fact some viewers may be bothered by some of the overly grainy sequences, especially in the more dimly lit scenes. The film does suffer from some noticeable edge enhancement and fairly consistent crush in the dark interior scenes. Serbis never had a very aggressive sound design and that lack of a wow factor carries through to the PCM stereo mix in the original Tagalog with burned-in English subtitles. There's nothing horrible about this mix in any way, shape or form, other than its obvious narrowness. Dialogue is crisp and clear and the evocative score sounds fantastic. The film is rather small scale, from a sound design standpoint and while a 5.1 repurposing may have added some space and depth to the crowd scenes inside the theater, there probably wouldn't have been much to gain from such a surround revision. Serbis feels too surreal and conceptual to be taken as docu-verisimilitude, but it doesn't need to settle for such conventions when every frame is alive, breathing dank sweat and sighing desperation. This house of sin and cinema runs by its own rules.
Sound: Emmanuel Nolet Clemente
Production Design: Benjamin Padero, Carlo Tabije
Editing: Claire Villa-Real
Music: Gian Gianan
Director of Photogrtaphy: Odyssey Flores
Screenplay: Armando Lao
Directed By: Brillante Ma. Mendoza
