Just strange: Movie titles and their meanings

Vivamax has rebranded itself VMX whose movie titles have begun to sound comical. One of them, the focus of a media conference held at the Viva Communications Inc. offices at Ortigas Center at the boundary of Mandaluyong and Pasig recently, is titled Ungol.

Well, its director, the young and chubby Bobby Bonifacio, has a sense of humor even as he limits his definition of the word “ungol” to the pleasures of a sex act.

“Ungol is the sound made by males. Those of women are termed as ‘halinghing,’” he sweetly ruled. 

Some of the journos and vloggers soon whispered among themselves that the both Tagalog words “ungol” and “halinghing” refer to a kind of sound and really knows no gender. In fact, some online Tagalog-English dictionaries associate “halinghing” to the generic sound made by horses, generally translated as “neighing.” 

The online Tagalog Monolingual Dictionary defines neighing as “tunog na likha ng kabayo bilang pagpapahayag ng damdamin, o mahinang ungol na tanda ng sakit, pagod, o sarap (the sound that a horse makes when it expresses its feelings of exhaustion or pleasure).” 

Audrey Avila, Stephanie Raz, Chad Solano and Ghion Espinosa are the lead actors of Ungol. Raz portrays a blind owner of a small room in a congested depressed street which she rents out to partners who want to have quickie sex but can’t afford even a “decent” motel. The character’s blindness doesn’t prevent her from renting herself out, too, as often as she can. 

Another recently released VMX movie is titled Baligtaran, a term that popularly refers to clothes (specifically “jackets”) which are “reversible,” meaning, the jacket can be worn “inside out”. Its lead cast is composed of Apple Dy, Calvin Reyes and Skye Gonzaga (who is female). It’s director is Aya Topacio, a self-revealed lesbian. 

Topacio is among the directors of the GMA-7 war series Pulang Lupa and he recently went viral for directing a very passionate bed scene between Alden Richards ang Sanya Lopez who are known to be reticent stars, who hardly do even sexy pictorials. The series Pulang Lupa is shown daily on Netflix Philippines. It’s currently on the Top 10 Most Viewed TV Shows. 

Topacio has been working with GMA-7 as second-unit director of the drama anthology Magpakailan Man since 2012. Before Pulang Lupa, she co-helmed Royal Blood. 

Her first VMX film was Mahal Ko ang Mahal Mo, starring Angelica Hart, Angeline Aril, at Van Allen Ong. It had lesbian sex scenes as  well as heterosexual ones. Baligtaran is only her third film with VMX. 

Krista isn’t a funny title but a quaint one. In the film directed by Sydney Zid Pascua, Krista is a woman’s name, fashioned from Kristo. If you’re not from Metro Manila or a Tagalog-speaking town, you may not be aware that Kristo may refer not only to holy  God’s only begotten son (as per Catholic doctrines) but also to the man announcing the bets in a cockpit. 

Krista is happy with the simple life she’s living with the husband she loves very much. But her ambitious husband ends up losing big at cockfighting, forcing him to commit a crime, and leading Krista to use her body to save him.

The name Krista obviously comes from Kristo, a Tagalog rendition of Christ, the son of God who as a preacher used to put up his arms as a symbolic act of embracing the multitude. He was later crucified with arms stretched out sideways.

And that could why the announcer of bets in the cockpit came to be called “Kristo.” In the VMX yarn about the movie about a husband’s falling into a cockfight vice, the film’s scriptwriter named the wife “Krista.” Isn’t that kind of naming humorous and silly? Or simply ridiculous. 

Donselya is another film recently released by VMX. To the non-Tagalogs, let’s tell you that it means “a sex virgin.” It’s derived from Spanish (we were a Spanish colony for 400 years!) 

Donselya topbills Dyessa Garcia and Anthony Davao, a nephew of Ricky Davao. It also stars the seasoned actors Arnold Reyes, and Allan Paule in bold roles. Reyes has a lot of Instagram and Facebook pictures with his collection of images of Virgin Mary and some Catholic saints. 

A certain Christopher Novabos directs Donselya.

As the saying goes, “The times, they’re a-changing!”