Where Love and Intimacy Live Between Languages in ‘Gitling’
Where Love and Intimacy Live Between Languages in ‘Gitling’
Feature art by Jasmine C. Cabriles
In Jopy Arnaldo’s Gitling, Makoto (Ken Yamamura), a filmmaker, travels to Bacolod to present his work at a film festival, where he is assigned a local translator, Jaime (Gabby Padilla). Their relationship begins as a practical arrangement: Jaime helps Makoto navigate conversations, schedules, and the subtleties of a place that’s not his own. As they spend time together, working on the film, moving through the city, sharing meals, the film frames translation not just as a professional task but as a condition of being with another person, one that demands attention, patience, and a willingness to misunderstand.
At its core, Gitling interrogates how intimacy is shaped through language; not only the words people speak, but the effort it takes to meet someone across differences. The film treats love and connection as processes rather than destinations, formed in moments where communication is partial, tentative, and incomplete. By placing its characters between languages, cultures, and private forms of loneliness, it suggests that closeness doesn’t come from perfect understanding, but from choosing to stay present in the space where meaning is still being negotiated.
Multilingualism as Emotional Landscape
The film uses five languages to craft its emotional landscape: English, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Nihongo, and an invented language created by Jamie. Each language serves a distinct function: English mediates a bridge and formality, Tagalog and Hiligaynon evoke memory and vulnerability, Nihongo conveys restraint, and the invented language constructs a private space shared only between the two characters. Color-coded subtitles help viewers navigate these shifts, simultaneously highlighting the characters’ mental states and emotional nuance. Language is not simply a tool for communication but a medium through which attention, care, and understanding are negotiated. Understanding someone, even imperfectly, becomes an act of love.
Switching between languages mirrors the emotional labor required to inhabit someone else’s world. Moments of translation and negotiation show how effort and attentiveness become forms of love. The invented language, in particular, functions as a private bond, demonstrating that connection can exist outside shared fluency. Gitling shows that understanding is provisional and partial, yet still deeply significant. Through these linguistic landscapes, love is rendered tangible in its complexity, fragility, and precision.
The Work of Translation, Learning a Language, and Attention
Jamie and Makoto spend hours phrasing and interpreting Makoto’s film. This process mirrors the emotional labor of inhabiting someone’s art; reading pauses, translating phrases, and discerning unspoken intent. Love, in the film, emerges from the persistence of attention and the effort to engage fully despite inevitable limitations. Subtitling becomes a visual representation of care and engagement, showing that intimacy requires effort, not just feeling.
The level of attention and care they give each other’s words is rare. To have someone pause over your sentence, asking what you truly meant, is a form of respect that borders on affection. The film suggests that love is sometimes just that: staying long enough to get it right. But translation also exposes limits. Not everything can be carried across. Some parts remain private, protected by language barriers or personal boundaries. The film does not frame this as failure. Instead, it shows that partial understanding can still be meaningful. Sometimes being known halfway is still enough to leave a mark.
Imperfection and the Courage to be Known
Jamie and Makoto never fully inhabit each other’s worlds, yet they form a tender connection. Boundaries, distance, and linguistic limits shape the intimacy they’re able to cultivate. Love is not defined by completion but by the willingness to remain open, to expose oneself while accepting uncertainty. The film emphasizes that being partially known can be meaningful and courageous. Gitling reframes imperfection as a condition for tenderness and sustained care.
Partial intimacy is shown as a source of depth rather than frustration. Affection exists without expectation of resolution, highlighting the significance of restraint and attentiveness. The characters’ choice to be present within these limits demonstrates that love can thrive without ownership or pursuit. Vulnerability is expressed subtly through repeated gestures and careful listening, rather than dramatic acts. The film affirms that courage lies in inhabiting emotional truth, even when outcomes are uncertain.
Love Between Words, Intimacy Beyond Expression
Connection is cultivated through small repeated acts: shared meals, conversation, and the invented language. These ordinary moments accumulate meaning, demonstrating that intimacy is built through attentiveness rather than declarations. Gitling positions relational labor as the essence of love, emphasizing presence over pursuit. Observing and responding to another’s rhythms becomes a gesture of care and commitment. The film suggests that sustained attention, even brief, can carry emotional weight equal to grand declarations.
Love manifests in recognition and empathy, even when boundaries prevent full closeness. Presence, patience, and willingness to inhabit another’s world become expressions of care. The film shows that relational work is active, delicate, and ongoing, requiring sensitivity to nuance. To have someone pause over your sentences, asking what you truly meant, is a form of respect that borders on affection. Love sometimes is simply staying long enough to get it right.
‘Everyone deserves someone who can speak their language’
In Gitling, this line carries weight. Speaking someone’s language extends beyond vocabulary; it requires patience, humility, and sustained attention. It means listening closely enough to sense what remains untranslated. Across English, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Nihongo, and even a made-up language, understanding becomes an act of care.
What the film leaves behind is not resolution but resonance. It remains in the realization that intimacy doesn’t always unfold into something certain or permanent, and yet its impact remains undeniable. There is tenderness in connections that exist within limits, in affection that never demands more than what can honestly be given. Love sometimes lives in restraint, in the choice to stay gentle with what can’t fully become.
And maybe that is why that “love” feels so real because it acknowledges that some connections arrive not to be completed but to change the way we listen, the way we speak, the way we hold space for another person. In the end, Gitling suggests that love is not measured by how far it goes, but by how deeply it learns to listen, and sometimes, the most honest form of love is simply learning someone’s language, even when the conversation must eventually end. Beneath the color-coded subtitles and careful silences lies a simple truth: to be known without being reduced is a rare gift. After all, everyone deserves someone who can speak their language.
