First Blush

Unang Tikim [First Taste]
Directed by Roman Perez Jr.
Written by Mariane Maddawat

Launched during the start of the current decade, the Vivamax arm of Viva Films swiftly dominated the subscription streaming services of Philippine cinema and never let up since. The answer will be obvious to anyone who checks out Netflix and several other so-called over-the-top (meaning bypassing middle agencies) services: specialized products, less costliness for the consumer, absence of censorship. It also doesn’t take a lot of figuring out to determine what material the service focuses on, which is what the majority of homesick overseas kabayans demand – sex, as much as the average film presentation can contain without devolving into gonzo pornography, softcore style.

11011Philippine-based recognition mechanisms still have to give Vivamax its due,[1] but an American film festival, the FACINE International, already gave its grand prize last year to Lawrence Fajardo’s Erotica Manila: Foursome, a concatenation of TV-style shorts. Its gold winner for short film was a hard-hitting satire titled “How to Make an Effective Campaign Ad,” directed by Roman Perez Jr., who also took charge of the first theatrically released Vivamax project, titled Unang Tikim (literally First Taste, officially translated as First Time).

The first couple, Yuna and Becca. [Unang Tikim, Pelikula Indiopendent & Viva Films; screen cap by author]

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11011So far the film has attained the stature of moderate box-office performer, running into its second week in selected venues – certainly a far more preferable fate than the usual theatrical flop that characterizes even major releases nowadays. More surprising is the type of theme tackled by Unang Tikim: sex, as expected of a Vivamax production, but with the primary relationship transpiring between two women. To be sure, positively depicted lesbian narratives are not new to Philippine cinema, although they occur with far less frequency than gay-male stories. Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the first woman-filmmaker National Artist, arguably started the trend in 1986 with Sensual, also a “bold” (or sex-themed) venture like Unang Tikim.

11011The primary points to make regarding other early attempts at recuperating same-sex love stories between women is that first, they were mostly featured as subplots in straight-centered narratives; and second, they had to contend with the usual homophobic demonization of gay women in local releases. (I can only remember one other premillennial release, Mel Chionglo’s I Want to Live from 1990, as another woman-positive presentation; an earlier “event” movie, Danny L. Zialcita’s T-bird at Ako [Lesbian and Me] from 1982, resorted to visiting violence on its lesbian character, although it nevertheless features a sharply observed turn from another National Artist, Nora Aunor.)

The rival couple, Yuna and Nicco. [Unang Tikim, Pelikula Indiopendent & Viva Films; screen cap by author]

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11011The digitalization of film production during the millennial era brought with it a number of well-realized women’s love stories, most of it from independent producers, with Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s 2013 Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita’s Last Cha-Cha) standing out for being a coming-of-age tale, the distaff counterpart of Aureus Solito’s Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) from 2005. In a remarkable category all its own is Joel Lamangan’s Sabel, a 2004 film based on the seemingly incredible though real life-based odyssey of a woman who started out as an easy-going teenager, entered the nunnery after giving birth, married the prisoner who raped her, then emerged after a long disappearance as a rebel warrior committed to a female spouse. (Sabel and I Want to Live were both scripted by yet another recent National Artist, Ricky Lee.)

11011Unang Tikim constitutes a throwback to the earlier sexualized treatments of lesbian film narratives, with one character’s bisexuality providing the crisis in the plot. It also desists from dealing primarily with “developments” in which one or the other character suffers physical homophobic retaliation – possibly a lack when we inspect actual lesbian stories, but strangely affecting in this case because of the respite it provides from the usual judgmental approach. The fact that Perez, in less than a decade of practice, has overseen well over a dozen film projects, alongside Vivamax’s determination to mount a widescreen-worthy attraction, has resulted in a work of ineffable sensuality and beauty.

Held by Nicco, Yuna finds support from Becca. [Unang Tikim, Pelikula Indiopendent & Viva Films; screen cap by author]

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11011What must have added to non-Vivamax viewers’ fascination is the fact that an impressive stable of talents has been residing in the studio – most of them necessarily excluded from mainstream TV-centered programs because of their readiness to bare flesh and engage in activities that may be considered less-than-wholesome, to put it mildly. The film embraces the central female couple’s class difference and even occasional bouts of rage alongside their expressions of passion, but always with a tenderness in its approach to their pain; when such respect for the humanity of Others is extended to the male interloper in their story, that kind of treatment makes total sense in the course of the unfolding of their difficulties.

11011The only complaint one might raise about Unang Tikim is how the measure of its throwback is too far off in the past,[2] so that the complications provided by more recent lesbian film romances seem to be way in advance of the characters’ fates. As if to dig in further, it provides a closure that nearly elevates its realistic material to the realm of the fantastic. But in terms of a narrative tradition that cannot boast of having enough happy endings, what the film purveys deserves to be regarded as an intervention worth maintaining.

Notes

First published August 23, 2024, as “A Lesbian-Positive Film” in The FilAm.

[1] On August 18, 2024, after I had drafted and submitted this review to The FilAm for publication, the Young Critics Circle announced that they were nominating Lawrence Fajardo’s Erotica Manila: Foursome, the same aforementioned FACINE gold prizewinner, for their Film Desk’s annual competition in all their available categories except first film. One of the few instances where I was glad to be proved wrong by my homegrown colleagues.

[2] Upon the filmmaker’s recommendation, I watched a previous film he made, titled Sol Searching (2018), and was appalled at the critical negligence it suffered, despite its clear superiority to nearly all the other titles released during the same period. In a social-network post, I speculated that this may also have been due to the work’s throwback properties, reminiscent of unpolished celluloid material as well as the “developmentalist” media policies of the early martial-law period during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

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