Bathhouse was so attuned to the times, yet we wonder what took so long to make a film like it. It wasn’t the self-loathing macho dancer bar of our parents’ generation. He even became an asshole, and that’s part of the process. Who knew? This was a place where our young hero (Rayan Dulay) made friends, found love, grew up, and found himself. It also announced something larger: By situating his drama in the darkened, members-only club for men, where “no callboys allowed”, Bathhouse made real the existence of a gay community, away from mainstream eyes.
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If Duda was the punch, Bathhouse was the knockout, proving Pablo’s first venture was no fluke. If Philippine cinema was believed to have been dying at the time, it took one small gay film to change the game.
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The pioneering success of Duda directly led to all the independently produced digital releases - gay or not - that made its way into theaters thereafter. Thanks also to those first few who willingly shelled money to see something untested, the payoff to the gamble. It would have meant nothing if the film itself wasn’t urgent - an ultra-personal account of a tumultuous same-sex relationship in a circle of upwardly mobile friends, a slice of non-stereotypical realism that needed a drastic underground approach to find its audience - picture and audio quality be damned. Movies have been shot in digital before, but it was Pablo’s low-tech, low-budget model of distribution that was groundbreaking: He lugged around his own video projector to host pockets of screenings, thus birthing the so-called digital revolution we know today. But it boasts the biggest casting stunt in Philippine cinema to date The title role played by three actors: Dolphy, a comedian always loved for his effem caricatures, and his two sons, Eric Quizon (a former heartthrob pestered by gay rumours) and Jeffrey Quizon, in the performance that jumpstarted his career as an actor’s actor. Too bad it’s the image of the flaming victim that stuck, in no small part due to the film’s own shortcomings. By following the life of Walter Dempster, Jr., from young sexual awakening to a senior citizen living in a home for the gay aged, the drama traces a path of survival. Markova put a real-life gay face to our past, turning “comfort gay” into a household name for homosexuals raped by Japanese soldiers in WWII. The 21st century started with much jonesing for history, in the aftermath of the centennial of Philippine independence. But the following are the few that are must-sees if only because, in the decade that’s closing, they’ve already made the most indelible impact. 3, or Imburnal, perhaps?) because people have varied tastes, and some films tend to get more appreciated as time goes by. Your friends or friends of friends will recommend unlikely titles ( Wen Timawa Meets Delgado, Last Supper No. A few crowd favorites have been left off ( Ang Lihim Ni Antonio, Daybreak).
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I simply asked: Can I imagine the decade in Philippine gay culture without these films? Or, Can I imagine moving into the future without having passed through them? Then I chose ten because it’s a neat pretty number. So this is not a list of the biggest critical darlings ( Jay and Selda are not here), nor my personal guilty pleasures (Otherwise, there’ll be Boylets) - though they can be those, too. The Pinoy gay film exploded in number and diversity in the last ten years, that it seemed necessary to identify the landmarks - in chronological order, to see how we got from there to here. I tried to avoid the word “important”, because it’s such a snooty concept.