Bodies, rest and motion... The Masseur is an unexpected film to come from the Philippines: an intricately structured meditation on the body in life and death which divides its attention between a funeral and acts of sex without flinching from either.

Iliac (newcomer Coco Martin) is the twenty-year-old eldest son of a truck driver based in provincial Pampanga; like many uneducated boys his age who move to Manila in search of work, he has gravitated to the sex industry. He is one of a dozen or so boys working as masseurs-prostitutes in a club called Maharlika; we follow his session with a client named Herbert, who lives with his mother and writes trashy romance novels under the name Marina Hidalgo. Meanwhile, Iliac's hard-as-nails girlfriend, a bar hostess, waits outside in a taxi for him to get off work. The typical evening in Maharlika (during which one boy suffers an asthma attack brought on by baby powder) is cross-cut with Iliac's later trip home to Pampanga for his father's funeral, a trip that brings to a head his feelings for his mother, brother and sister, and his conflicted feelings about his promiscuous father.

First-time director Brillante Mendoza finesses both the film's unusual structure and its unembarrassed observation of both milieus. It's a fine achievement.