Mark V. Reyes | Last Full Show / 2005

the moviegoer

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mark V. Reyes (screenwriter and director) Last Full Show / 2005 [19 minutes]

 

Philippines director Mark V. Reyes’ debut film was Last Full Show (2005) in which a wealthy young high school student, Crispin (Francis Villanueva) asks his driver, Bert (Nanding Josef), to stop one evening on his way home and wait while he takes in a movie at a local theater.

      This theater, however, does not simply show movies but caters to gay clients, younger and older who join up in sex in the auditorium proper and in the bathrooms—a sort of grander version of the several gay porno movies that used to exist on New York’s West Side near 42nd street, mostly now all closed for decades due to AIDS.

     This particular movie house, in some senses, is more like a gay bar than a porn theater, showing regular films, mostly in English to a crowd most of whom know one another and are regulars, couples often pairing off into regular duos, probably for most of them the only place where they can go to have gay sex outside of a cheap motel. And here are also the old-timers like Gardo (Sugus Legaspi), a man in his mid-to-late 30s and his friend, the younger Jess (Jeremy Aguado) who introduced him years previous to the niceties of movie palace sex. These days the friends stand mostly behind the seats commenting on the goings-on before them almost like guides to the world with its own rituals and codes of behavior.

    Despite the “No minors” restriction, our young hero seems to have no difficulty with the ticket seller (Mae Paner) in getting in, and the commenting duo note the arrival of the young “twink” who almost the moment he sits in the center of the theater is joined by an older man, his shirt already lifted as if ready for immediate sexual activity. Crispin quickly moves a few seats off, and Jess suggests that perhaps Gardo should try “a dance” just to see if he is what the boy is looking for.

      Gardo takes him up on the dare, and in a few moments the two are kissing, Jess the next day joking with his friend about what a dirty old man he is attempts for find out how big or small the boy’s dick was.

     But there is something different already between Gardo and the boy, and when they accidentally meet up before the movie in the bathroom the next evening, they again join in sex contact, following it night after night. His friend is soon warning him to remember that such relationships are a felony. But Gardo’s relationship with the kid has become a kind of compulsion, and he is not about to stop meeting up every night with the boy whose name to this point is never mentioned.

     Soon after, when the movie breaks down, Gardo suggests the boy join him at his favorite soup house, where they dine on the restaurant’s specials, he asking about the boy’s schoolwork, advising him to study hard, while the younger asks Gardo about work.

     What we see is what often happens in such May-September pairings, or used to occur even in the old days when gay bars did not strictly restrict underage men. The boy, who’s apparently businessman father obviously does not spend much time with his son since there appears to be no restrictions put upon Crispin’s coming and goings. And Gardo offers him not only a seeming introduction into gay sexuality, but serves as a kind of surrogate elder. The boy clearly enjoys their night out finding the food a little “odd” but comments on the surroundings—a place where they are not embarrassed about being seen together—as something truly enjoyable. The boy is spotted in the restaurant, however, by his other caretaker, the driver, who clearly knows what is going on and does not approve. The two ride on a small street gurney to the place where Bert waits in the car introducing Crispin to his new adventures.

       The next time we see the two together it is simply for a date, with no movie involved, when the boy presents Gardo with a present, evidently an “antique” necklace, a gift which we recognize by the way he wears and holds it over the next several frames, that has truly touched the older man.

       But as he cherishes the necklace, so we observe Crispin in his room pinning up yet another movie ticket to his wall filled with hundreds of them in all colors—far more than he might gathered over the nights of movie-going with Gardo. To emphasize this, the camera begins with a “close up” of the tickets, quickly pulling back to reveal an even larger space than we might have first imagined.

     The next evening, Gardo is a bit late for the movie, as Crispin sits within waiting, looking at his watch in consternation. In line, Gardo discovers a man behind him, Bert the driver, who begins to talk suggesting that the “antique” which he proudly displays on his chest, might not be the “real thing” these days. By the time they reach the window, Bert demands a ticket for two, taking Gardo aside to suggest that if he dares the other to go in. “You see, it’s time to finish the dance. Let’s see who will get hurt the most.”   

       Perhaps we have been so fearful of how Gardo might be treating the boy that we have missed the fact that the boy has turned his habit into an addiction, with Bert having each time when the boy finally determines to break off the “romance.”

       This is the last full movie, at least for a while, for the teenager, who returns to the car looking sad and disappointed, maybe even a bit tearful as he tells Bert, “I just want to go home please.”

        Bert answers with his usually perfunctory “Yes sir,” but for the first time in the film addresses him by his name, “Crispin.”

       The reality hits us, probably mostly movie goers closer in age to Gardo, with a slight punch. It is the elder who is most deeply hurt, for he knows that it is likely that another such boy might never again enter his life. Next time, as he joked to Jess in the very first scene, he will simply be watching the movie.

 

Los Angeles, October 15, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2021).