My favorite thing about her was that she listened: in the age of landline telephones, we once spent three hours talking about everything and nothing at all, but it was mostly me telling her stories I wrote, while she listened. In its own way, that was my secret language - a way to understand me more deeply as a person. I've never been the best at social cues so communicating through talk has never been my strength. Instead, I used stories. Back then I wasn't any good, and sometimes I think the same of myself even now, but she liked them. "John, keep writing," she told me. I told her the secret behind what would become the name of this blog. Without her, I would never have kept on writing, and this blog would have never existed. I was supposed to type "it ended", but how could something end if it didn't begin in the first place? We no longer talk, mostly thanks to my own stupidity, seeing something that wasn't there. In the end, what doomed our friendship was that while I shared my secret 'language', she didn't share hers.
(Anyway, please make fewer romantic films like this. I only have so many pseudo romantic stories to use as a prelude. I'm running out. haha.)
In Jopy Arnaldo's debut film Gitling, Jamie (Gabby Padilla) works as a translator and interpreter - a conduit between one language to another. She is given the job to interpret for a Japanese filmmaker, Makoto (Ken Yamamura, The Wolverine) as he presents his film in a film festival in Iloilo. The two connect over a shared interest in languages, but they know their time together is limited.
In the process of understanding another person, language forms a crucial part of building that level of understanding. As something that is built by culture and shared experiences, language is a large part of who we are, and it helps us connect to each other in ways no other species on the planet can achieve. Jamie uses an invented language to connect even more with Makoto, as after all, in Makoto's own words, "it's better having someone you can talk to in your own language." It becomes their refuge, as they find comfort in each other. Imagine going to another place and being unable to talk with anyone there? It's like a prison. Makoto's initial discomfort at trying to speak and understand the people around him (including a well meaning but hilariously undecipherable attempt at Japanese) is due to his inability to speak another language. He is relieved when he meets Jamie, who is able to understand and communicate with him.
And yet, there are other ways to communicate a feeling without the need for words: Makoto goes around Bacolod trying every food he can get his hands on, as food and cuisine are an example of non-verbal language. As a filmmaker, Makoto expresses his emotions through his art, whether the films he makes are silent or have sound. Through a shared experience, feelings can be exchanged and an intimate space is created between speaker and listener.
Gitling also finds ways in its form and in its themes to convey the importance of language. Its subtitles are color-coded, switching between translations of English, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Nihongo and Jamie's made-up language, and it also adds uses captions to express feelings during certain scenes (though considering the excellent performance of the two leads, it does feel a bit redundant.)
Gitling (a Hyphen) is a symbol that connects two separate words. In the context of Jamie's invented language, the word that results from this joining forms something new and distinct, possessing elements of both root words. The same, Jamie herself muses, can be said of all kinds of relationships: two people coming together, forming something with an entirely new meaning.
When we speak a language, we often intuit what we intend to say at the end of our sentence, that is, even as we speak the first word of our sentence, we already have a sense of the completed sentence in our minds. Jamie and Makoto know how this is going to end. We know as well, based on our shared language of cinema and the film's tendency to crib from the films it loves to create a familiar (some would say cliched) structure. We know the outcome, but the way to reach that outcome is no less devastating. That leads to some of the most memorable moments in any film I've seen this year.
Gitling is an exquisite film, a skillful exploration of the many ways we communicate with each other, with or without words.
Relationships entail a level of empathy - of sharing your feelings with another person to the point that sometimes you're in sync. In Gian Arre's Tether, that concept is put to its limit.
After a particularly... energetic hookup, Kate (Jorybell Agoto) and Eric (Mikoy Morales) find that they share sensations and feelings between each other - if, say, Kate pinches her leg, Eric will feel his own leg being pinched. If Eric eats something delicious, Kate will feel the sensation of having eaten something delicious. Things take a dark turn when Eric, forever a playboy, makes the boneheaded decision to hookup with someone else, even though he should know that doing the horizontal tango will be felt by Kate as well. Men are stupid.
Tether turns from a fun little premise to a depiction of an extremely toxic relationship: thanks to abandonment issues, Kate becomes extremely possessive and paranoid, while Eric's promiscuous past and insecurities aren't exactly helping either. Their connection becomes something that imprisons them rather than something that makes them closer.
The problem lies in the way this premise is executed: the film's form is, to put it bluntly, bland shot-reverse shot conversations. Most of the (honestly too dragged out for their own good) setpieces are just the characters sitting or standing around somewhere and talking to each other. Had the film's editing or cinematography matched the two actors' intensity it would make for a truly chilling experience instead of the slogfest it ended up being. (If Jorybell Agoto is to win an acting award in this Cinemalaya edition, I think it should be for this film.) Technically, the film also suffers from various other problems, from footage that doesn't look color corrected to sound that can barely be heard (especially during a very crucial scene at the end.)
To be fair to the filmmakers, Tether was a last minute addition to the festival, giving them a very short time to put out a finished film, or at least an approximation of it. A for effort, but Tether ultimately feels unfinished.
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