Vivamax: Review of PAMASAHE: Flesh for Fare

December 9, 2022

Lineth (Azi Acosta) was one of the people who lost their homes when Typhoon Odette devastated Roxas City in Capiz province. With her newborn daughter with her, she decided to stowaway on a RORO ferry on its way to Manila. She was planning to go to Segovia in Pampanga province to seek shelter in the house of her brother Toto (Felix Roco) and his wife Shiony (Shiena Yu) to get her bearings back. 

On the bus, a seaman named Rod (Mark Anthony Fernandez) helped her when she was being harassed by ruffians who saw her breastfeeding. Rod paid for her bus fare and patiently listened to Lineth tell him about the ordeal she went through in the hands of the ship captain Ramos (Julio Diaz) and his minions (Rash Flores, Chad Solano and Alvaro Oteyza), and about the old woman (Erlinda Villalobos) who took pity on her.  

The simple title once again has a double meaning here. Being about a stowaway, "pamasahe" first refers to the "ticket fare," which Lineth did not have. Lineth just so happened to have skills in massage, so that was what the Captain requested in return for letting her stay on board, with "pamasahe" meaning a "request for a massage." Being a Vivamax film, you can probably guess what more Lineth had to give the men instead for her fare, or after the massage.

The scenes of rape, and other perversions like incest and adultery, were also given so much screen time than it was necessary. This poor young woman Lineth suffered the most degrading, humiliating and disgusting abuse at the hands of various men her whole life to date. We did not really need to repeatedly see every repulsive detail of these sick, degenerate acts. These scenes tended to bog down the momentum of the storytelling than enhance it.

For a neophyte, Azi Acosta was able to more than adequately portray the miserably melodramatic life story of her chronically-victimized character. Mark Anthony Fernandez tried his best to play against type as a helpful co-passenger, but always with a nagging sense of suspicion about him. Diaz, Flores, Solano and Oteyza can already do lecherous and lascivious blindfolded, as they've done many times before.

Vivamax viewers will not be surprised anymore that there will be a violent turn of events after all of the sex scenes have been shown. The moment they focused on someone's pistol at the beginning, you knew this gun will figure significantly later on. However, just when we thought we've predicted exactly how Lineth's story was going to end, cult-director Roman Perez, Jr. came up with an 11th hour twist to mess with our minds at the very end. 5/10.