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1—Bayaw
English Title: Brothers in Law
Year of Release: 2009
Director & Screenwriter: Monti Parungao [as Monti Puno Parungao]
(From a story by Danio Caw)
Producer: Climax Films
Cast: Danilo Vergara, Janvier Daily, Andrew Miguel, Kaye Alipio, Tina Agregado, Daniel Magbanua Jr., Noel Cabuhat, Cleo Muparanum, Jun Austria, Danilo Arayde Jr., Benedict Flores, Manny Pahaub, Rizaldi “Saysay” Rodriguez, Rolly Fundales, Hazel, Dhang Macapagal, Monti Parungao, Don Marion Mariring, Sany Chua, Onin Lara, Johnrex Espinosa, Alvin Agoncillo, Jeff Almazan
Danilo Vergara is taken out of his jail cell to be interviewed by a police investigator. He narrated how he had difficulty making ends meet as an entry-level police officer, forced to engage in petty corruption but finally targeted in a buy-bust operation. His brother-in-law Rhenan Jacinto is a neighborhood layabout, betting on spider combats and earning playing money by selling himself to queer onlookers. Danilo’s wife gets increasingly antagonistic with her hubby and brother, since she has to act as sole earner from nightclub work. When Danilo gets fed up with her insults, the couple quarrel over his gun—which accidentally discharges and kills her. He and Rhenan flee to a distant town where they use up the money they brought to stay in a motel and snatch valuables from unsuspecting pedestrians. Eric, another sidewalk denizen, makes their acquaintance and offers the use of a small room where he squats. Whenever Danilo feels stressed and needs to find relief, he makes use of Rhenan, with Eric becoming an additional option. Eric though seeks to split the alliance between the fugitives, which Rhenan is too naïve to notice but which Danilo readily realizes.
2—The Escort
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Monti Parungao [as Monti Puno Parungao]
Screenwriter: Lex Bonife
(From a story by Lance D. Collins)
Producers: Lexuality Entertainment & Treemount Pictures
Cast: Miko Pasamonte, Danniel Derramyo, Jommel Idulan, Bryal Legaspi, Katleen Borbon, Franklin Jundak, Dennis Diwa, Lance D. Collins, Bien Rivera, Edward Sanggalang, Hart Thiel Pascual, Joseph Daoang, Alan Dimaano, Clifford Coloma, R.J. Naguit
Karlo barely earns enough to cover his rent and has to contend with prospective clients who renege on their appointments. At the bar where he makes himself available to johns on the prowl, Yuri introduces himself and confesses an attraction to him. Karlo takes him home for a night together, where Yuri also narrates how he has to live with a congenital ailment. Karlo agrees to a second meetup, a rarity for him, and has to blow off a lucrative date with an eager client. He discovers that his other sources have avoided him, pressured by the client angered by his turnaround. When Yuri also seems to have canceled him, he tries to determine his new pal’s whereabouts and encounters unwelcome news.
During the decidedly transitional period, roughly the first decade of the current millennium, when video production was low-end enough to enable mall screenings without threatening celluloid releases, the resulting niche was immediately occupied by soft-core gay-male material, inasmuch as it attracted the kind of audience who could use darkened spaces as an opportunity to cruise for prospective partners. Monti Parungao was one of the names associated with the trend, although his output was less prolific than most. Typical of the spell in Pinas “queer” cinema, the releases were short and traded on romantic tales intended for distracted consumption. Bayaw and The Escort complement each other for being two-hander quest narratives premised on the aspirations of underprivileged individuals. The fugitives in Bayaw define their interactions as situational occurrences—i.e., they make use of available warm bodies to satisfy their carnal needs, and only arrive at a realization of an emotional attachment ironically when imprisonment stops them from fleeing further. In The Escorts, an older hustler is surprised to realize how the love he dispenses is precisely what he had been depriving himself of, awakened to this reality by a younger practitioner who happens to admire him. The epiphany occurs early enough, so the story should conclude when it happens, were it not for the intrusion of complications induced by the characters’ destitution. Film critic Jojo Devera points out in his review how hope and despair collide in the characters’ crossroads, where they “coexist in a contemporary world of excess and absurdity normalized amidst the chaos of it all, while dismantling social boundaries” (“Everybody Hustles,” Sari-Saring Sineng Pinoy, November 2024). Parungao’s presentations deliver on the promise of significance and poignancy in a much-abused and unfairly derided subgenre.
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