Area takes place in a neighborhood outside the main red light district of Angeles City. The neighborhood is home to cheaper brothels largely visited by locals. Ben (Allen Dizon) runs one of these brothels, and is struggling with the waning business. Hillary (Ai Ai de las Alas) is a prostitute in this brothel, and she's been saving up all her money so she can get to the US. Years ago, apparently, she sent her son away to live with his father, and has since been dreaming of reuniting with the child.
The events of the film take place over a couple of days during Holy Week. This gives the film the opportunity to contrast its seedy happenings with the larger context of the spectacle of penitence. It approaches something resembling social commentary as it shifts between scenes of prostitution and scenes of religious self-flagellation. It also smartly leaves room to discuss the history of the place, to put it within a context inseparable from the identity of Angeles itself. It all at once acknowledges the horror involved in the industry while understanding the paradoxes that allow it to seem so commonplace.
Intellectually, that's a fascinating thing. In practice, a lack of a solid narrative keeps this film from really taking off. It doesn't have any real focus, so it ends up feeling like a series of loosely connected episodes. It captures little slices of life from both the prostitutes and their pimps, most of them revolving around the same basic points of sadness. It doesn't really get too deep into who these people are or where they came from. It doesn't really give many of these characters concrete goals to aim for, the plot feeling listless as these people drift in the empty squalor of their setting.
It plays out as bits and pieces. Ben takes his mom to get her dialysis treatment. His young son talks to him about some day losing his virginity at Area. An older prostitute and an overweight prostitute bemoan their lack of customers. At one point, the girls are sent out to get pap smears. The characters mill about, serving time in the purgatory that is this neighborhood, never really getting anywhere. The film has a slightly comedic edge that makes it feel different from most films that take place in such squalor. It’s an interesting touch, though it isn’t really enough to give the film a solid direction to run in.
This becomes more the story of the place than a story of the people. And the film does have a fascinating take on Area, reveling in the strangeness inherent to characters fondly remembering the days when there were 700 brothels running. These are memories of oppression that have somehow turned into a golden age, the reality of the squalor today causing the past to grow more brightly in spite of the same injustice at play. It’s a powerful idea that might have bloomed further were it combined into a more solid plot. A lack of narrative doesn’t give actors much time to shine, but Ai Ai de las Alas does offer a very human face to the film’s general ideas.
Area is a fascinating setting, but that is rarely enough to sustain a feature film. It really could have used a central narrative just to bind all these disparate parts together. There is certainly merit to a lot of what the film says about Angeles and the general culture of the Philippines, which can at times swing wildly between religious fervor and reveling in sin. But the lack of a central narrative focus makes these ideas seem odd and disparate.
My Rating:
