What happens to love when death gets in the way? This year’s Puregold CinePanalo lineup offers two glimpses.
“Patay Gutom”, co-directed by Carl Joseph Papa and Ian Pangilinan, follows a lonely man who begins seeing a ghost after eating food meant as an offering to the dead. “Multwoh: Patay na Patay Sa’yo”, directed by Rodina Singh, follows a young woman who returns as a ghost with 40 days to settle her unfinished business.
Both films use the supernatural to explore queer love, but what they find in that space is less straightforward than a love story alone.
Finding connection in grief
“Patay Gutom” follows Tristan (Pangilinan), whose isolated existence begins to change after he accidentally eats food he was supposed to deliver as an offering to the dead. The experience opens his eyes to the ghost the offering was meant for: Art (Khalil Ramos), a lonely spirit who gradually becomes more than just another presence in Tristan’s strange new reality.
The film treats the relationship as an extension of Tristan’s loneliness rather than simply a supernatural romance. His connection with Art develops alongside its exploration of family, grief and memory, giving the story more to work with than its premise initially suggests.
That relationship, however, does not always land with the same strength. Tristan and Art can sometimes feel childlike in their interactions, and at times, their dynamic stays on the same emotional register for too long. The film also introduces several ideas on the characters without always giving them enough room to develop.
Its treatment of hunger, however, gives those ideas a more coherent center. Food becomes a language of love and remembrance, drawing from the Ilocano practice of atang, or offering food to the dead. Hunger eventually becomes more than something Tristan experiences physically, reflecting his craving for companionship, affection and closure, as well as the connection he finds with Art.
The film’s visual language reinforces that unusual relationship. Art is rendered through rotoscope animation while Tristan remains in live action, placing them in different visual dimensions even as they occupy the same spaces. The contrast makes their relationship feel both impossible and strangely ordinary within the world of the film.
With a gentle idea at its center, “Patay Gutom” finds a creative and interesting way to explore love, life and longing through a supernatural relationship. Its story remains grounded in very human feelings and, refreshingly, never treats queerness itself as the problem to be resolved, allowing Tristan and Art’s relationship to simply exist as part of the larger story.
Unfinished love story
“Multwoh”, meanwhile, tackles the afterlife belief that the dead have 40 days to settle their unfinished business. For Marcel (Sassa Gurl), a queer college student who dies before fully acting on her feelings for longtime friend Miguel (Joao Constancia), that means confronting what she left unsaid and finally confessing her love.
The 40-day window gives the story a built-in urgency. Marcel has run out of ordinary time, and her return becomes a way to examine the hesitation, fear and uncertainty that can surround queer love when rejection or judgment has already been internalized.
Sassa Gurl gives Marcel a distinct personality, carrying some of the funny, unhinged energy audiences may be familiar with from her online persona without making it the entirety of the character. Joao plays Miguel, Marcel’s longtime friend and love interest. Their chemistry, along with the film’s comedy and relatively focused storytelling, makes its first third its strongest stretch.
That focus, though, becomes harder to maintain as “Multwoh” expands. The film layers in several characters, jokes, supernatural devices and tonal shifts, creating an increasingly diffuse narrative. Its central relationship is clearest when the story returns to Marcel and Miguel, while some of the later detours feel more like additions than developments of the emotional story.
Still, the film’s willingness to be silly and irreverent keeps it from becoming weighed down by its supernatural premise. The comedy gives Marcel’s afterlife predicament some lightness, while the soundtrack is well integrated into the film, with songs that feel deliberately matched to the scenes and complement its youthful energy.
Beneath its chaotic energy, “Multwoh” remains interested in the persistence of queer love, exploring how feelings can endure even after death has taken away the ordinary time to express them.
Love beyond the living
Taken together, the two films use the supernatural not simply as a way to tell stories about the dead, but to make visible the kinds of love, grief and longing that can be difficult to express in ordinary life.
“Romansa sayo, horror story sa iba,” says a line in “Multwoh.” It gets at something that runs through both films without making them the same story: love can feel completely ordinary to the people experiencing it while appearing strange or even frightening to everyone outside it.
For Tristan, that means finding connection in someone no one else can see. For Marcel, it means trying to finish a love story after death has already taken away the ordinary time to tell it. Their supernatural worlds give those feelings a literal shape and making room for love, grief, longing and the things left unsaid.
That “Patay Gutom” and “Multwoh” approach queer love so differently is also part of what makes their place in CinePanalo meaningful. There is something refreshing about seeing queer characters at the center of stories where their queerness is not treated as a problem to solve, but simply as part of who they are. Even when their stories cross into the afterlife, their love is allowed to remain just that: love.
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