Vivamax: Review of TUHOG (2023): Father as Foe

November 3, 2023

Michael (Arron Villaflor) was a soldier who just proposed marriage to his caregiver girlfriend Abie (Apple Dy). One day, he received a call that his estranged father Roldan (Joko Diaz) had suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. Despite harboring a deep hatred for his negligent father, Michael was persuaded by Abie to move back into his childhood home so they can take care of the ailing older man. 

With this sequence of events, director GB Sampedro and writer Marvic Kevin Reyes set up the sticky scenario for the forbidden love triangle that the title suggested. In Filipino, "tuhog" means "to string together," usually used for flowers in a lei, or pieces of meat on a barbecue stick. So in this story by Sampedro and Reyes, Abie had strung together both her boyfriend Michael, and his father Roldan on her string of lovers. 

There had been two previous movies with this same provocative title, both of them critically acclaimed. The first one was by Jeffrey Jeturian in 2001 satire about filmmakers retelling the real-life story of a farmer who raped his daughter and his granddaughter. The second one was a black dramedy by Veronica B. Velasco  in 2013, about three passengers who were all impaled together on a metal rod that pierced through their bus. 

While the previous two Tuhog" movies were intelligently-written, this Vivamax film had a very weak and awkward script, which led to uncharacteristically bad acting performances from the lead cast. Villaflor was over-playing the mentally-disturbed Michael, while Dy and Diaz were severely underplaying. They had all given more than satisfactory acting turns before, but in this one, they were given embarrassing things to do and lousy lines to say.

As expected, the newer actors mostly gave amateurish performances: Dyessa Garcia as Roldan's skanky business partner Therese (with two inconsequential sex scenes), Andrea Barbierra as Rheng, Abie's BFF at the home for the aged and Billy Jake as Darwin, the co-worker who had a crush on Abie. However, there was one newbie who actually gave a very natural performance despite limited screen time -- Bo Ivann Lo as the prostitute Anne.  2/10