Gibson Bonifacio stopped speaking when he was a child. Now twenty, he returns home to Manila for Christmas. While always festive in the Philippines, for his family it is tinged with sadness, marking the anniversary of his twin brother’s death.

A secret from the past combined with the drudgery of everyday life in the company of sweating machos and patronising managers may turn out to be an explosive mixture worthy of Park Chan-wook’s cinema of vengeance and passion. But the film was made by young debutante Élodie Yung, who invites us for a ‘full body massage’ to a parlour where a young Cambodian immigrant is trying to earn money for a better life for herself and her family. Obviously, it is not her dream job and the clients can be excessively fussy. How long can you accept their demands, peevishness, quips, comments and ‘inappropriate’ requests? In this inciteful satire, drama is intertwined with poignancy and revenge has a spicy flavour.

In 1995 Las Vegas, a homesick cover band singer writes an original song to connect with her daughter who is growing up in the Philippines without her.