Serbis

The most impressive aspect of Mendoza’s seventh film in four years is how it lives and breathes its one location: a rundown sex cinema in Angeles City called ‘Family’ (we learn the name from the film’s one exterior shot of the building in which the Family sits suggestively next to a sign that reads ‘Mendoza’).

Mostly handheld, always frenetic and always noisy, Serbis dips in and out of the lives of the sprawling members of the Pineda family, who run the cinema and live in it, and their various physical, sexual, legal and financial quandaries. There are blowjobs, boils on butts, hints of incest, accusations of bigamy – and customers exploit the auditorium’s dark rows and sleazy fare to ply trade or seek it. The mood is as grubby as the aesthetic. The energy of the camera, always moving, always uncovering a new story, is infectious for a while, until the novelty wears off and interest wanes.