Strictly Confidential: Confessions of Men Having Sex With Men

You may get lost while watching Strictly Confidential: It's largely a documentary, but there are also poetry readings and abstracted images of naked men. It certainly experiments with form. But, like Director Jowee Morel's previous docu-whatever, When a Gay Man Loves, Strictly Confidential attempts to paint too broad a canvas of homosexuality that it ends up with no focus and little depth. The title doesn't even apply.

The experiment flops because of the details. Those queer poems? Could've been read better. Those expert interviews? They often make hasty generalizations about gay men, passing them off as facts. Those naked men? Twisted and discolored, they don't look sensual, exactly, and it's hard to tell what they're doing. The private parts are slapped with black boxes, but that one's probably the work of the MTRCB yet again. There are supposedly 28 naked men here, including a bunch called "The Game Boys": Jhay-Ar Sta. Maria, Brew Bondoc, Chito Gaspar, Rodel Moreno, Richard Miles, Warren Medina and Avi Avila.

However, some ideas in Strictly Confidential clearly come from a positive place. There's an almost gradeschool level approach to its lessons, carefully explaining as if to people who don't know anything about gay men or gay sex -- are there people who are as clueless anymore? -- and advocating the use of the politically correct term "MSM" or "men having sex with men" and also safe sex. So even if Strictly Confidential is messy video-making, it could still save a life or two.

GRADE: C

Related Links:
More Pics and Info at Multiply
Jowee Morel Website

True-to-Life Confessions: Ang Pagtatapat ng Masahista; Ang Pagtatapat ng Macho Dancer; Ang Pagtatapat ng mga Sex Performer

The formula for these mid-length documentaries is as bad as it is simple: Take one sensational subject, a profession in the sex trade (strippers, sex masseurs, live sex performers), and give it the cheap tabloid treatment. While the real-life subjects' faces are hidden in shadows during their narrations, the most melodramatic cliches are emphasized through written texts, maybe to wake us up from the boring visuals, then interspersed with extreme close-ups of their bodies in re-enactments of their work. It's exploitation without revelation, in all senses of the word.

In both Ang Pagtatapat Ng Masahista and Ang Pagtatapat Ng Macho Dancer, the regurgitated stories of poor people forced to use their bodies for survival far outnumber anything remotely novel, unique, or even sincere, although there are a few interesting tidbits here and there -- that is, if you can stand the disintegrating visuals and listen to it like a bad radio interview. The naked body shots are only titillating in concept, though Macho Dancer is more watchable than the static Masahista. They're essentially longer, more human, only slightly better versions of network television's already awful, bullying, and uninsightful ratings-grabber "exposes" on the subject.

Ang Pagtatapat Ng Mga Sex Performer has less of the tabloid overemphasis, and also overall an improved video, mainly because the men -- who in real life, perform heterosexual sex in front of a live audience, or as toros in a torohan -- don't feel the need to be defensive about their masculinity, unlike many of the guys in the first two videos. They even sound sexy when they express pride in their macho work. (About half of the video features women subjects.) A performer's penis is almost visible through wet whities during a shower scene, and it's as close to a money shot as anything in the series.

Another video called Ang Pagtatapat Ng Mangkukulam focuses on similarly sensational tabloid fodder (the occult) but promises none of the sex, so I won't even bother.

GRADE:
ANG PAGTATAPAT NG MASAHISTA: D
ANG PAGTATAPAT NG MACHO DANCER: D
ANG PAGTATAPAT NG MGA SEX PERFORMER: C

Stardancer

The default thinking in the Philippines is that men who work as male strippers do so out of poverty; they wouldn't be in that profession otherwise. Stardancer, the straight-to-video documentary directed by Ihman Esturco, wants us to think it's different: It's pushing the idea that the men love what they do, out of unbridled choice.

The video seems to be in direct reaction to another recent release, Ang Pagtatapat Ng Macho Dancer, which was a frustrating repetition of cliches about poor guys forced to do things against their morals. Stardancer is a lot more liberal. In truth, though, the two documentaries couldn't be any more alike. They both forego the actual evidence to support their unoriginal claims, instead bludgeoning us with tabloid throwaway voice-overs and texts. In Stardancer, the voice of God is saying things that the real-life macho dancers aren't really saying. It also skims through topics like romance and the history of the profession, but it's so pedestrian, it's barely cohesive.

The one big difference is that Stardancer's men unabashedly show their faces during interviews. And what a bunch of good-looking men they are. It's easy to believe they're the titular monicker in whatever bar they work for. They overflow with charisma, confidence, and PR skills, which are valuable in their job, and for the camera, they seem to say they're not ashamed. Some of them are personalities you may recognize from modeling shows or male pageants, or from past erotica, such as Kiko Montenegro and Brent Lorenzo in Pantasya. You have to wonder if they were bar dancers discovered to model or act, or models/actors who are role-playing as macho dancers especially for this video. Other "stardancers" include Victor Valerio, Vince Ignacio, Russel Anderson, Gerald Makisig, Vincent Mercado, and Jeff Alajar.

In fact, the real reason to buy this DVD is the bonus feature of the guys individually performing one-minute erotic dance numbers packed with skin close-ups, peekaboos, and in some cases, erect penises flashed menacingly. The episodes are often photographed in low-key lighting that makes what is otherwise total flesh exposure a little harder to see (and also a little more pretentious in its artfulness). What the video fails in documentary filmmaking respectability, it makes up for in trashy titillation.

GRADE: B+

Related Link:
Official Site

Paper Dolls

This Israeli-produced documentary, directed by Israeli Tomm Heymann, follows a group of Filipino drag performers, known as "The Paper Dolls", who also work as caregivers for the elderly in an orthodox suburb in Israel. The early moment when Giorgio, a Filipino hairstylist, started conversing in Hebrew, the movie had me enthralled. This is one fascinating, revealing, ultimately great portrait of my fellow Filipinos and fellow gays who are also living in a more extreme otherness.

The journey takes us deep and far, with highlights such as a dream performance at a famous Tel Aviv nightclub that turns into sad disillusionment, an offbeat intergenerational friendship between a caregiver and his charge, and the ominous fear of deportation that depicts a larger view of the plight of immigrant workers. Through it all, the transsexual Pinoys display an admirable and inspiring dignity, and so does the movie. I fell in love with it.

GRADE: A

Now showing. For showtimes, click here.

Related Links:
Film Trailer
Trailer at YouTube
Reviews at Rottemtomatoes
Review at Film-Forward
Negative Review at Fipresci
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