June 16, 2023
26 year-old Patrick (Vince Rillon) is married to Jenny (Alexa Ocampo), and they have a child with special needs. With the full knowledge consent of his wife and parents (Rey PJ Abellana and Isadora), Patrick also carried on an affair with a middle-aged homosexual man named Daniel (Jay Manalo), who was very generous in extending him financial assistance. Using his connections, Daniel was able to help Patrick to fly to Japan.
He was accepted in a Japanese school for international students, which he attended every morning. He worked as a salesman in a store in the afternoons. Because of increasing demands from various family members back home -- therapy for his son, medicine for his father, bribes for his brother -- Patrick was forced to accept the invitation of Richard (Ali Asistio), a fellow Filipino in his boarding house, to be a "hosto" like him.
A "hosto" is a male nightclub worker in Japan. In the film, Richard specifically differentiates the status of a "hosto" to be more respectable than that of a regular callboy. The way it was portrayed in the film, a "hosto" is a male GRO or guest relation officer. They sit and drink with guests, usually middle-age matrons, to entertain them. They could also be taken out of the club for extra bedroom services -- essentially still a prostitute.
Patrick's main reason for going to Japan was supposedly to study, but it was never fleshed out what course he was taking or what he planned to do with it after graduation. It was also not realistic that he would go to a Japanese school with no prior Nihongo lessons back home. The way his family was asking him for money, it would seem his priority purpose of going to Japan was to work, not at all to study.
Vince Rillon proved his consistency in realistically portraying ordinary Juan de la Cruz blue-collar types, this time sporting a distinctive shoulder-length hairstyle with streaks of white. Director Jao Elamparo's best sequence in the movie was a five-minute montage of determined Patrick shuttling around from his classes to one odd job after another, only to realize with exasperation at the end of it that everything he was doing was still not enough.
The basic story has been told and retold over and over in various films about desperate young women and men sell their bodies for sex for the sake of money. A new detail here was the offer of a Filipina Japanese citizen, Thea (Angela Morena), offered Patrick a marriage of convenience so he can get work legally and earn higher pay. There was also a tender scene where Daniel bared his weeping gay heart to a couple of older gay confidantes. 4/10.
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