By It’s a wonder that Lino Brocka’s MACHO DANCER exists. It’s a marvel that anyone saw it back in 1988. It’s a testament to Brocka’s formal mastery that the film strings together as many disparate tones as it does. And it’s nothing short of a miracle that you’re reading about it today.
I genuinely waffled for days about the genre shorthand with which I’d write about the film. Queer, obviously, but not in the way or to the extent I expected. Erotic drama, on some levels, but in the SHOWGIRLS way where the ground falls out from under you and you’re left feeling queasy for having been turned on in the first place. Crime is apt, I suppose, but that carries such a heavy connotation; Michael Mann this is not. It’s often a slice-of-life picture, too, not to the extent one could editorialize it as such but too much to be ignored. It is as pulpy as it is earnestly political, relentlessly complex despite its carnal pleasures. Please know, then, that when I say, “Brocka’s film,” the word contains such multitudes.
Anyway, Brocka’s 1988 film, long out of print for reasons we’ll get to in a moment, is the beneficiary of a lovely 4K restoration by Kani Releasing and Carlotta Films. That restoration, which first premiered in January at New York’s MoMA, had its West Coast Premiere as part of the Los Angeles Festival of Movies (with a future theatrical release underway).
The film follows Pol (Allan Paule, in his debut), a poor teen from the mountains of the Philippines, whose American lover has just concluded his tour of duty. This prompts him to move to Manila, where he becomes a male stripper and call boy at local joint Mama Charlie’s; such boys are known colloquially as—you guessed it—“macho dancers.” To delve further into plot details would spoil the odd, jerky rhythms at which MACHO DANCER unspools; moreover, it is not particularly “the point.” Far more salient is the film’s distinctly ‘80s moodiness, full of saturated hues and idiosyncratic neon lights washed in synths and guitars so laughably trite they become chic.
That, and its many (many) sumptuous images of the male body, in or out of bed, are especially erotic amidst numerous “shower” scenes in which two macho dancers take turns pouring water and lathering up the other. Brocka lingers on these shots uncannily long, threatening to teeter the film into outright softcore. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that the film was out of print for decades due to heavy censorship. By the time of the film’s release, the Marcos regime had not held power in Brocka’s native Philippines for two years, but the aftershocks of that authoritarianism manifested in widespread uncertainty and a subsequent desire for stasis.
Which meant that, despite a warm reception at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Filipino government and public were hardly ready to receive such an explicit, abrasive film—one that heavily depicts police corruption, fueled by a continuing political fury. It’s hard to say how the Filipino public received the film, given how few of them were ultimately able to actually see it. Naturally, Brocka himself intervened, smuggling a 35mm print into the States, where it sat at the MoMA for close to four decades. The restoration comes from that print (rather than the more traditional source negative)—not that you would know it from how rich and detailed the result looks. It’s a truly remarkable job across the board, both specifically of its time and hi-fi enough you’d never clock its bootleg nature.
Likewise, the film itself is a peculiar historical artifact, simultaneously progressive and regressive; the aforementioned shower scenes are as indulgent as they come, but a compulsory heterosexuality and gay-for-pay dynamic rears its ugly head throughout. It’s anti-police corruption (who isn’t?) but, maddeningly, stops short of being anti-police full stop. It celebrates the queer sex work at its core just as much as it chastises it—the subject of the criticism being, of course, the exploitative systems at its core, but that can tend to look a lot like blaming the faggots anyway. These wrinkles generally enhance the experience of the film, though, for a viewer willing to engage in the necessary cultural exegesis. And no matter what, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that it’s not something we’re supposed to be watching. Almost like we’re at Mama Charlie’s ourselves.
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