Review: Masahista

Missing pieces weaken an otherwise powerful film

I braved viewing Masahista, throwing away all my preconceptions in the wind with the guarantee of it being an award-winning film by Brillante Mendoza (who seems to have lived up literally figuratively to his name). Well? I emerged unoffended, for it turns out to be a successful, respectable telling of a day-in-the-life (well, almost) story of a boy working a gay sex den which fronts as a dirt-cheap massage parlor (what the… no showers!?). However, there are a few missing elements, which is a major dampener.

The story is told in a novel fashion: running two sub-stories in bits and pieces side by side, to create an ironic vision of the secret life of the body massage technician (ok, masseur) cum call boy. It’s a case of a past told at the same time with a more recent past, or to put it differently, the recent is used as a backstory to explain the past. Anyway, the result is great: really witty juxtapositions and profound visual puns. That conflicted life is thus finely exposed: death vs. life, lust vs. holiness, ugliness vs. beauty, cruelty vs. love, lies vs. truth.

These are, however, themes that have been most likely explored before. I haven’t seen Brocka’s Macho Dancer and Reyes’s Live Show, but I am willing to bet that the male-prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold engaging in transactional (i.e., love-less) relationships with clients has become by now a repetitive bore.

The way the film depicts the delicate transactionalization, however, with all that flirty temptation, faux sweetness, sophisticated bargaining, and subtle betrayals from both camps, is precious. Done with impressive economy, we could say it's the equivalent of Hemingway in creative writing terms. A fellow viewer brilliantly added, “Notice the way the masseur flirts with his client for a new pair of rubber shoes. It’s like asking his father sheepishly for a new pair.”

But let’s not mince words here. My main problem with Masahista is that it glosses over the profound evil and other complex conflicts lurking in the heart of the male prostitute:

- the willful pride and ambition
- the envy
- the greed and blatant materialism
- the sloth, i.e., the love of easy money
- the surrender to hopelessness and desperation
- the opportunism as shameless code of conduct
- the guiltlessness and rationalization, with poverty as clichéd excuse (but is it so extreme as to have no alternative at all?)
- the unconscious personal shame and the social insult he bears
- the loathing for humble work (e.g., banana cue vendor?) in the face of his gift of physical attraction, albeit one cursed by being born in poverty.

Sadly, these things are never hinted at, or never enough.

My favorite scene is that really profound moment in front of the giant blinkering Pampanga parol (Christmas lantern), with everyone staring speechlessly at the star, the symbol of a redeeming God standing tall in its Technicolor splendor, more powerful than all the filth and depths of evil in the world. It’s a brief, unexpected, tear-jerky moment for the viewer, giving this movie the potential power of an enduring classic were it not for its glaring -- and telling -- sins of omission.

On a final note, the movie is also to be commended for pointing out that, (1) yes, “gay love” do happen, and (2) yes, even genuine love (whether sexual or platonic) between two consenting males with same-sex attraction do happen, and (3) yes, not all prostitutes may not be in it for the money. The film makes these wonderful distinctions and implications, but the latter two especially are more exceptions than the rule. Nevertheless, presenting an incomplete picture invites the risk of the film being construed as romanticizing an otherwise leery and lurid subject.