MACHO DANCER Philippines, 1988
Director: Lino Brocka
Stars: Alan Paule, Jacklyn Jose, Daniel Fernando, Princess Punzalan
Filipino censors hacked Macho Dancer to pieces before its domestic release, removing sexually explicit scenes. Since this must have left a very short film with at least two-thirds of its scenes missing, we can all be thankful that a print was smuggled out of the Philippines and is now housed in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.
This is an extremely powerful and emotionally impacting film which has a quiet reputation but which deserves some kind of revival in the form, maybe, of retrospetive showings at gay and lesbian film festivals, most of which certainly have room for more meaningful queer world cinema. Instead of arty camera tricks and quirky editing cuts, director Lino Brocka has used a very straightforward, almost documentary style approach. Scenes are simply filmed, one chronological event follows another, and the movie was shot on the streets of red-light Manila. Pol (Alan Paule) is a rural Philippino who supports his family by being the lover of a visiting American GIs. He's lured to Manila by the promise of more glamorous prostitution, and more money and there he meets Noel (Daniel Fernando) another country boy who's become an experienced "Macho Dancer" who gyrates on stage with other near-nude guys at various gay-for-pay sex clubs. For a couple of American dollars, tourists or ex-pats can take the guy of their choice. Drug dealing, petty crime and crooked cops are part of the scene. In the simple, melodramatic plot that follows, Pol falls in love with Bambi (Jacklyn Jose) a vivacious hooker from the girlie bars. Noel's sister Pining (Princess Punzalan) has also fled rural poverty only to land in a prison-like Manila brothel, and apart from finding new ways to earn big bucks, such as starring in gay-porn videos, Pol and Noel hatch a plan to break her free.
Like Mandragora and unlike, say, K Hole, Macho Dancer is a brutally confronting film about people who move from the poorest parts of developing countries to the corrupt, drug-soaked corners of the big city and who provide sex for money because they have no other income-earning option. They get taken for rides by all and sundry and put up with appalling conditions at home and at work. Addictions, diseases,assaults and hunger are daily hazards and take the lives of many. Others see their souls starve to death while they're chained to a brothel bed paying off a relative's debt to a crime lord.
Great acting is the order of the day, with Jose and Fernando rewarded with the Filipino Oscar, the Gawad Urian, for their performances. A scene where Noel, sobbing in the embrace of Pol, briefly tries to kiss his surprised friend on the lips, is a standout. The film is heartbreaking and unrelenting and it's difficult to watch at times. Brocka, who died in a car accident in 1991, was prolific, and the Philippines' most celebrated film maker. He made several movies similar to Macho Dancer, such as Manila: Into the Claws of Darkness, which looked at a rural boy who rescues his sister from imprisonment in a Manila brothel. Despite working under the eye of the Marcos dictatorship, Brocka was able to make dozens of highly critical films about the plight of Manila's poor.
Personally, I find the go-go bar rituals bizarre. The undulating, hair-preening bicep-flexing choreography is decidely unsexy to me while the numbers on the underpants and the fat, old white men enjoying the attention of groups of hungry working boys creates a very purgatorial atmosphere that makes me want to run for the door. On the other hand, I find the whole grotesque spectacel kind of sublime and hypnotic. Brocka, too, was apparently fascinated and repelled by the go-go scene and the impassive, almost casual style of Macho Dancer suggests that while his felt for the boys, he never really knew what to think.
