Written by Louis Pelingen

Note: Spoilers Ahead.

Back in 2023, the lauded praise of Gitling was a sight to behold. The sort of film whose attention is gradually spread around, winning awards and applause from critics and audience alike. Creating so much hype that just by looking at the local film circles shouting for theatrical screenings or digital streaming releases, such demands just never stop, only creating more ripples as time goes on. Thus, 2 years have passed, and now, through Juanflix, Gitling has finally been pushed. The anticipation has finally met with a glowing reward.

The film’s emphasis on language and communication is immediately introduced within the very first seconds, showcasing the multiple languages that will be utilized throughout the film. Their own assigned colors reflect through Mycko David’s grounded cinematography. Still shots always permeate, with color palettes that firmly add tasteful beauty to the conversations between the Filipino translator, Jamie Lazaro (Gabby Padilla), and the Japanese filmmaker, Makoto Kanno (Ken Yamamura), being displayed onscreen. Observing how these two characters slowly bond, adjusting their languages from time to time as a means of knowing one another.

Interactions between Jamie and Makoto are understated; barriers between their conversations are riddled with subtitles, allowing the audience to pay more attention to the experiences these two have gone through in their lives as they remain alone within the hushed fields of Bacolod. The past romance that is crushed through their very circumstances, questions in their lives that they still haven’t answered, and conflicts in their current happenings that they always discuss… Yet brushed aside when it starts to get closer to their purview.

At first glance, there is an intention to this characteristic of silent distance. Even going so far as add meta-text to how it is not just these two characters trying to understand their dilemmas within understanding the conflicts within their past relationships, but it echoes towards the audience and critics that may have more than one interpretation of how they might understand the messaging and framing of the scenes being played out in films, and the intent of the director that can obfuscate or invite them to what they want to exactly reveal. It’s why, on the surface, the blunt subtlety becomes a purpose, especially in terms of making Gitling’s overall messaging become clear-cut to one message that everybody can understand.

Yet, all over the film, there is this constant frustration in how Jopy Arnaldo’s screenplay becomes emotionally and thematically more dull the more time these conversations fly by. Language in this case becomes a device that paradoxically does not serve more of what these characters or the plot try to express. Heavily reliant on the dialogue to the point that the visual storytelling is subsided to a fault, where even if the ‘tell not show’ format becomes an argument to the barrier that comes in Jamie and Makoto understanding each other, it also ends up being a distancing effect to the viewer themselves. Always stationary and grounded, where there’s only so much that this dialogue-heavy approach can offer when there’s not much in the way of imagery or emotion being built up in all the nuance being laid down. 

The film also runs into the problem of dropping crumbs of interesting ideas, but never exactly focusing on them. The balancing act between the examination of tension that underscores Jamie and Makoto’s lives and the reasonable yet shallow literary and film reference points to accentuate the meta-text becomes disjointed. The made-up language that gets introduced later in the film as a way for these characters to bond over language never takes over, just placed down as a cute add-on. And the sense of yearning that the film aims to showcase never blooms at all, relying so much on the stale scriptwriting that Gabby Padilla and Ken Yamamura’s potent performances try so hard to uplift, yet when the blunt direction doesn’t allow the emotions to manifest on screen, even their acting just couldn’t inform the yearning being placed on its literal text.

It does not help matters that the film constantly creates nods and references to this specific brand of subtle and dreamlike asian filmmaking sensibilities that others before it have done more effectively (Wong Kar Wai and Hirokazu Kore-Eda come to mind), something that the extremely kitschy score and the overtly tasteful cinematography end up being a flagrant sin. Chamber instrumentation forces itself into the scenes that do not amplify its feelings and ends up becoming infuriatingly needless, and vibrant colors and still shots that may look pretty, but when paired with the script itself, they become headscratchingly tacky. Easily made for creating a moodboard for aesthetic consumption, and never adding impact to the plot itself.

There is a point in the film where Makoto Kanno explains why he let his film become silent on its last leg, explaining how the insertion of subtitles internalizes the thoughts of his characters, the need for exact understanding is there to bear. It’s a moment of needing to have clarity on what his characters express, a reflection of his own identity whose overwhelming thoughts wander and land elsewhere. A moment of meta-text that, while intriguing, becomes underwhelming when applied to Gitling itself. Not just through introducing it late in the film, but also sparingly placing them within scenes that don’t really benefit them. 

It’s a headscratcher having to put on those frustrations, because there is no denying that Gitling carries a well of charged potential that comes from its essential ideas. The meta-commentary surrounding mutual understanding is paralleled within its subtitles and silence that’s deliberate in showcasing what Jamie and Makoto really feel. An observation of their reserved reality that is still presented with a semblance of colors, where, despite the muted tension that these characters carry in their relationships, their simple exchanges surrounding their interest in film, literature, and language share more meaning in the world than any sort of visual symbolism that can be placed elsewhere. There is something worth looking for here, a gateway film for those who are still new to this brand of low-key, moody Asian filmmaking that mentions other adjacent films, which can further deepen their appreciation for them. And given that it is streaming on Juanflix, at the very least, that accessibility can lead them to more films worth checking out as well.

But in short, personally, Gitling is a film whose initially fascinating concept runs so long, yet it doesn’t do much to further capitalize on its essence. Language within dialogue is blunt yet also limiting; emphasis on the emotions inhabiting Jamie and Makoto doesn’t come off as enrapturing, and replication of Asian filmmaking aesthetics becomes less effective, more inert. It might sound and look pretty in the distance, but look even closer, and the mood it nurtures unfortunately just falls flat. Its language is completely understood, but it speaks without feeling. That itself hurts more.