The story revolves around the lives of men who frequent the seedy bathhouse "Klub Hombre" in Manila, the Philippines, where it operates discreetly underground because of frequent raids and arrests by the police. Gay men meet there to relax, unwind, and enjoy sexual contact in the back room. Rico (Ray An Dulay) is a very young nerdy student who is just discovering his sexuality and exploring new worlds as a young homosexual. He has fallen for someone he met on the internet and decides to meet him in person. However, when Rico sings a song he has just composed for his new love, the guy is turned off and leaves him.
Chris (Jet Alcantara) is a veteran hunk at the bathhouse who is bored with the entire scene. Like most men there, he has shared his body with as many men as possible. The director then cuts away from the story to show us how these people meet in real life: through the internet, at the park, cell phones, ads, and so on. Chris has a taste for newbies or freshly out gays. When Rico comes into his life, he sees the potential for a mentor-student relationship, until everything gets too intimate. This mismatched affair sends Rico into a downward spiral through the dingy walls of the bathhouse and through various groups of gays, bi-sexuals and transvestites, and transforms him into just another bitter bitch. He leaves his parents, does not have a job, has sex with every man he meets at the bathhouse--and he manages to do this without spending any money or get a disease. Not a very realistic scenario.
This steamy thriller is about the ideals of a young gay man in love and the practicality of a mature gay man about to retire from a life of cruising. It exposes the cruel world of gays socializing within the dark dingy walls of a bathhouse. The acting is inadequate to good, the dialogue is usually poor, and most of the scenes inside the bathhouse are so dark that one cannot see much of what is happening. But it is an interesting picture of Manila and does show gay life there. The film was helped financially by the Aids Counsel in the Philippines without credit. Jet Alcantara wrote the screenplay, and Crisaldo Pablo directed. In Tagalog with English subtitles.
