Unang Tikim (2024) Review: First Taste, The Meaning of a Woman’s First Love and Choice

When does love truly end? Is it when you no longer love each other, or when you accept the reality that you cannot stay together even though feelings remain?

The Philippine film Unang Tikim (First Taste, 2024) deals with the first love and separation of two women, and the emotions they face again as time passes.

What matters in this work is not simply a romance between women. It asks whether two people who were once each other’s everything can truly break free from their past relationship after living separate lives, and what choices must be made between a stable present and an indelible first love.

🌿 Moments Where This Film Sinks Deeply

• For those who believed their first love ended, but still hold someone in a corner of their heart — you can confront the weight of emotions that do not fade with time.
• For those who have agonized between love and realistic choices — it brings to mind situations where the desire to be together is not enough to sustain a relationship.
• For those looking for films centered on love between women and identity — the relationship between Yuna and Becca forms the core narrative of the work.
• For those interested in the emotional friction arising between a past lover and a current partner — you can examine how love, jealousy, trust, and responsibility intertwine.
• For those who want a deep reading of female narratives and relational shifts — it is worth examining what meaning the final choice made by the two women holds.

🎞 Before Watching the Film

This work is a romance drama produced for adult audiences, featuring physical intimacy and erotic scenes between female lovers.

However, the core of the narrative lies not in provocative scenes themselves, but in the shifts in relationships: love, jealousy, separation, and reunion.

🎬 Film Information

• Title: Unang Tikim (2024)
• Director: Roman Perez Jr.
• Screenwriter: Roman Perez Jr.
• Country: Philippines
• Genre: Drama, Romance
• Running Time: 110 minutes
• Platform: VivaMax
• Cast: Angeli Khang, Azi Acosta

📖 Unang Tikim Plot — A Female Romance Where First Love and Current Commitments Collide [No Spoilers]

Yuna, who works in a café, and Becca, an aspiring photographer, are each other’s first love and first partner. The two promise a future together, but begin a long-distance relationship when Becca leaves for the United States with her family. While they are apart, Yuna’s boss Nicco approaches her, and as jealousy and distrust grow between the two, Yuna and Becca ultimately choose to separate. Four years later, Yuna is engaged to Nicco and living a stable life, while Becca has succeeded as a photographer and returns to the Philippines with her new partner Trisha. Their chance reunion reawakens emotions that both thought had ended long ago, jeopardizing their respective present relationships. mb.com.ph+2

🔍 Why Unang Tikim’s First Love Disrupts the Present Despite Time

🌙 Interpreting Unang Tikim’s Relationship Created by the Beginning and Lack of Love

In this work, first love is not simply a beautiful memory of the past. For Yuna and Becca, first love was a relationship where they first confirmed each other’s identity and desire.

The two were lovers who experienced their first kiss and first physical intimacy with each other. Because they were deeply integrated into each other’s lives from the moment love began, the traces of the relationship do not easily fade even after separation.

In particular, an important difference in their relationship is the way they maintain love.

Becca tends to give everything to the person she loves, while Yuna cares for her partner yet struggles to endure the anxiety and loneliness arising from a long-distance relationship.

This difference is not a matter of who loves more. It means that even when sharing the same love, the conditions required to sustain the relationship differ between them.

Ultimately, their separation is closer to the collapse of the realistic foundation supporting love rather than the extinction of love itself.

💔 The Wounds Left by Unang Tikim’s Fissures in Jealousy and Trust

After Becca leaves for the United States, Yuna grows close to her boss Nicco. Nicco expresses affection toward Yuna, and the two eventually share a kiss.

Becca learns of this fact, but Yuna does not honestly admit to her actions at the time.

What shatters the relationship here is not mere jealousy. What lingers longer than betrayal is the experience of having that betrayal denied.

Becca later learns that the suspicions she felt were true. Therefore, past wounds cling to her feelings toward Yuna when they meet again four years later.

Even at the moment when the two grow close again, Becca cannot easily trust Yuna’s love.

This is the work’s central psychological conflict. Love can begin anew, but trust is difficult to restore without resolving past wounds.

🔍 Unang Tikim’s Choices Surrounding Women’s Identity and Love

🌿 The Distinct Desires of Women Portrayed by Yuna and Becca

Yuna is established as a bisexual woman. She is capable of feeling attraction toward both men and women, and her relationship with Nicco is not simply depicted as a replacement to forget past love.

In contrast, Becca’s identity as a woman who loves women is portrayed relatively clearly.

This setup makes the work’s love triangle somewhat more complex.

The time Yuna loved Nicco was also real, and her feelings toward Becca have not vanished. Therefore, this story is not structured as a comparison of whether men or women make better partners.

Rather, it is closer to a question of how one chooses the object of love and the direction of one’s own life.

Nicco also does not function merely as a villain. He genuinely loves Yuna and refuses to give up on the relationship even after learning that Becca still occupies a place in Yuna’s heart.

Devotion and possessiveness coexist within his love. This point makes the choices in the latter half even more complex.

🔍 Unang Tikim’s Final Choice Where Marriage and Freedom Collide

🥀 Reinterpreting the Ending — The Moment of Reclaiming One’s Choice Over Love

In the latter half, Yuna and Becca grow close once again. Prompted by Becca’s photo exhibition and photography work, they spend time together and ultimately reaffirm the lingering feelings they held for one another.

However, Yuna is already engaged to Nicco.

Yuna eventually confesses what happened with Becca to Nicco. Though hurt, Nicco states that he will proceed with the wedding. However, he sets a condition: if she wants to be forgiven, she must marry him.

In this scene, Nicco’s love reaches a crucial turning point. He does not want to lose Yuna, but struggles to accept what she truly desires.

Marriage transforms from the completion of love into a final condition for maintaining the relationship.

In the end, Yuna confesses her love for Becca once more, and Becca responds to those feelings. The film concludes with the two women choosing one another.

This ending is not the completion of love, but a process of recovering one’s right to choose in a life aligned with others’ expectations.

What Yuna gains is the freedom not to turn away from her own emotions. What she loses, on the other hand, is the stable future she could have built with Nicco and the time accumulated in that relationship.

Becca, too, has not simply regained love. She must make the choice to accept the person who once hurt her.

Therefore, it is difficult to read their reunion as unmitigated happiness.

Past wounds have not completely vanished, nor does being together again mean future conflicts will cease.

The film does not explicitly detail the future of the two. Instead, it leaves the responsibility they must bear even after choosing love to the audience.

🔎 In-Depth FAQ — Unang Tikim’s Ending and the Issues of Female Narratives

Q. Why does Yuna leave Becca and then choose her again? During their long-distance relationship, Yuna experienced loneliness and anxiety, leading her to open her heart to Nicco. However, as time passes and she meets Becca again, she confirms that past feelings still remain.

In this process, Yuna’s choice may appear somewhat self-centered. In particular, re-establishing a relationship with Becca while engaged to Nicco leaves room for criticism. Choosing love and fulfilling responsibilities toward an existing relationship are separate matters.

Q. What is Unang Tikim’s greatest limitation? Its greatest limitation is that the psychological evolution of the characters fails to accumulate sufficiently relative to their emotional conflicts.

As jealousy, misunderstanding, separation, reunion, and a love triangle unfold rapidly, the complexity of the two women’s relationship is somewhat simplified.

Additionally, because adult romantic expressions occupy a significant portion, audiences expecting a GL work that deeply explores female identity and relationships may find it somewhat lacking.

However, it is also necessary to consider the nature of commercial melodramas that seek to directly express love and desire through sexual intimacy.

✨ Unang Tikim — Love Is Completed Not Through Others’ Expectations, But Through One’s Own Choice

Between Relational Stability and Emotional Truth

While placing love between women at its center, Unang Tikim demonstrates how situations where love and responsibility, identity and social expectations collide.

In particular, it prompts reflection on how women’s love is handled within male-centric relationships and the institutional framework of marriage.

Yuna marrying Nicco may be a socially stable choice. However, a stable relationship does not necessarily mean the life one desires.

At the same time, actions cannot be justified solely on the grounds of true love. The wounds Yuna leaves behind for others before choosing Becca are also an important part of this work.

The freedom of love is completed not only in the right to choose the person one desires, but in accepting the responsibilities that follow that choice.

💬 The Moment You Choose Love, What Must You Be Responsible For?

Choosing the person you love once more may mean embracing past wounds as well.

Would you preserve a stable future with an already engaged partner, or would you choose a new beginning with the person you still love?

💜 Violet Screen Curation

• Bottoms (2023)
  • A B-grade black comedy narrative about two queer high school girls who form a ridiculous “women’s self-defense club” to win the hearts and relationships of the school’s coveted queen bees. Breaking away from the standardized victim narratives or romantic frameworks of existing queer films, it deals with the honest and candid inner lives of women hidden behind deprivation, vain desires, and clumsy solidarity.
• Drive-Away Dolls (2024)
  • A queer comedic road movie where Marian, longing for a free-spirited life after the pain of breakup, and her friend Jamie, with completely opposing personalities, get tangled up in a criminal incident during a roommate trip. It portrays the clashes, attractions, and true desires revealed amidst confusion between two women of opposing personalities in a sensuous and playful tone.