NYFF: Serbis

"No loitering here!" the signs around the dilapidated porno theater declare, but there's an awful lot of loitering in Brillante Mendoza's Serbis, along with fighting, chasing, lying, worrying, and baby-making. Set almost exclusively inside the cavernous building's staircases, hallways, back rooms, and darkened screening hall, the film encompasses a single day in the life of the sprawling Filipino family who runs and inhabits the theater.

There are boils and blowjobs, goats on the run, thieves, hustlers, little boys with lipstick, and a grandmother who is suing her husband for infidelity. Through some emphatic magic of cinema, what should be sordid and revolting (and apparently shocked critics in Cannes) somehow becomes inviting. Like the streets that surround the theater, Serbis teems with life. [Jürgen] ***

More from Sukhdev Sandhu, Daniel Kasman, Glenn Kenny, and David Hudson, and a video interview with Brillante Mendoza (part 2, part 3). Serbis screens at the 46th New York Film Festival on Sunday, October 12.