With Macho Dancer, Lino Brocka delivers a caustic and lucid film. Following a provincial teenager forced to sell his body in Manilla, he paints the portrait of a society where desire, poverty and corruption intertwine to the point of moral bankruptcy. Behind the artificial club lights, Brocka exposes the workings of a power that reduces survival to a body economy. Shot soon after the downfall of the Marcos regime, which saw the filmmaker jailed several times for his political stances, the film extends his fight against censorship and social hypocrisy. Macho Dancer is not a complacent descent into marginality: it is a defiant gesture, a cinematic act that exposes with relentless clarity the violence and suffering of a country where the democratic election of Cory Aquino failed to eliminate a system that persists today.
Jérôme Baron
Restored print · French premiere
This film is not recommended for young audiences (under 12)
Some scenes may be disturbing to viewers
