I agree with the previous comment in naming the film's content "everyday madness" but would like to specify that: "Dog Days" is about how women are treated in (a male) society. The episodes we get to see here show some variation in everyday discrimination of women, mostly categorized by age group. There is a senior man who makes his new partner look and act the way his late wife had, treating her like a doll that shall act "worthy of wearing" the former's dress. There is a middle-aged couple in whose relationship she is nearly a slave and he a (violent) master. Further we find a somewhat younger man who does not communicate with his friend/wife and instead of being really jealous about her affairs even makes friendship with his competitor(s). A young adult man makes clear to his friend - a girl who is really troubled by being pretty enough for him - that she has to be the jewelry at his side and to follow his narrow viewed rules of etiquette. Finally there is a man in his late fifties who calculating his own advantage delivers a simple-minded hitchhiking woman to a furious client who - taking her for guilty in having scratched his car - natural beats her up. To complete the examples we find the pal of the man in the "master-slave"-couple - after collectively abusing her - threatening and humiliating the former "in her sake" for she shall get rid of her partner and take himself as her new "master". During all this the inhabitants of the lately built neighborhood in which the action takes place rests under the burning summer-sun - absolutely motionless (sic!). Unfortunately I have not seen the last minutes of this shocking and authentic portray of the archaic structures that still reign in the relationship between women and men, but what I have seen convincingly analyzed the repertoire of discrimination. Probably a helpful tool in teaching even the less sensitive spectator what goes wrong - due to good visualization.

I was excited to hear that Cesar Montano had decided to make a movie in the Cebuano language. (Not 'dialect' as most Filipinos will incorrectly refer to it as. As Cebuano and Tagalog are as mutually unintelligible as French and Spanish are to each other.) But I was greatly disappointed when i saw this movie. Being a Canadian, of Cebuano parents, I was optimistic about the revival of the Visayan film industry when I heard about this film. I was further excited to hear that it wasn't another stupid action movie or melodrama as Filipinos love these types of movies. But alas, I was short-changed.
Panaghoy serves as an ego trip for Cesar Montano. Montano of course plays the hero of the movie. And when I say 'hero' I mean in the most stereotypical of manners; his function is to win the heart of a girl and lead the Bol-anons to victory against the Japanese. His character has no depth or complexity. He just fits the hero mold. The rest of the characters are one dimensional; they all fit their cookie cutter roles.
I'm all for slow-moving/meditative movies but this movie was just slow moving. It didn't really meditate on anything. Just because a movie is historically-themed, a drama and slow-moving doesn't make it a well-made film.
Particularly annoying is the American actor Philip Anthony. His performance was embarrassing.
If Montano wanted to revive the Visayan film industry he should have really thought this through. He said he wanted to make Visayan movies that could compete at Cannes and Toronto etc. but really, this movie would have been booed and hissed at at such festivals. To get Visayan films into the mainstream consciousness he should have at least made a movie that would have attracted audiences, even if it meant sacrificing quality. Obviously he didn't think about or get information on what kind of movies garner awards at Cannes so an audience-attracting movie would have been at least a foot in the door.
I'm afraid now that Visayan movies will not be made for a long time again because of this movie. If ever I said to a Filipino that I want to see more Visayan movies of course I'd get an answer like, "Visayans don't make good movies. Didn't you see Panaghoy Sa Suba?" Of course this is ludicrous as it is one example of a Visayan movie and probably the only example that anyone nowadays would be likely to see.
An example of movies that are meditative, not just slow moving, are the Tagalog film Blackout or David Lynch's The Straight Story. I hate to promote the Tagalog language as it is endlessly and unfairly promoted and shoved down the throats of non-Tagalog Filipinos but for the sake of calling a spade a spade I say that Blackout is a VERY good movie. These movies rely heavily on what Hitchcock called 'pure cinema'. Images without words are used to convey the story. But I bend the definition a bit for the sake of these two movies in that these movies use images without words to convey the mood of the movie. and they do it very well. Panaghoy thinks that if they simply take sweeping shots of the landscape then they have established the mood.
And what's with so many Filipino movies featuring a dying mother or grandmother???