After being panned by critics at last year’s Cannes Film Festival where Serbis was screened, director Brillante Mendoza was said to be surprised when his film got rave reviews from American critics.
Now he has more reasons to be surprised because New York film critics have delivered their accolades for the film.
New York Times’ film critic Manohla Dargis described Serbis as a "Gentle, bawdy and at times rambunctiously, ticklishly rude" and praised the director’s attempt at "something slyer and more thoughtful than easy nudity."
Serbis is a film that dared to be bold, showing naked bodies, graphic sexual intercourse (of various kinds) and a scene that involves a boil (pigsa, if you may) and a bottle. That boldness, on the edge of being over-the-top, was evident from the very first scene—a young, naked woman in front of a mirror mouthing "I love you" as the camera panned up and down her nubile body.
David Fear, Time Out New York’s critic believes that while Mendoza may have taken his cues from the work of world-cinema luminaries like Tsai Ming-liang, "the melodramatic mayhem this Filipino filmmaker drums up is completely his own."
"Rather than settling into a contemplative groove, Serbis bristles with live-wire intensity," Fear wrote in the magazine’s latest issue, which also called the movie as its "Film of the Week" and one of six films (that included Revolutionary Road and The Wrestler) as part of their "critics’ picks."
The Village Voice, New York City’s free weekly magazine, in its review aptly called "Cinema Inferno" calls the film "raunchy/thinky."
This is not the first time that Serbis made it to New York. Last year, it was screened at the 46th New York Film Festival. The film was the first Filipino work to play in competition in Cannes Fest since Lino Brocka.
Serbis opened at the Angelika Theater in Manhattan last Friday, January 30, and will run until February 12.
( Published on February 6, 2009 in Asian Journal Red Carpet Magazine p. 2 )
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