Fan Girl is about a fanatical Paulo Avelino fan (newcomer Charlie Dizon) who meets her onscreen idol (played by himself) in less than ideal circumstances after stowing away in the back of his pickup truck. As you’d expect, the young stan finds out he isn’t quite the perfect man when nobody’s watching. Here’s the 1:58 long trailer:
Directed by Antoinette Jadaone-best known for breathing life into the formulaic romcom genre in the Philippines over the past six years-Fan Girl is something new and bold from the director and is the kind of envelope-pushing MMFF film that audiences have been pining for.
In case you’ve been curious how much a digital movie ticket for the first all-streaming MMFF is, we signed up at Upstream and paid P250 to watch.
LIVING THE DREAM
The film gets off to a good high-energy start with some mall show realness that perfectly captures the crazed celebrity worship culture in the Philippines. After our fan girl sneaks her way into the back of her idol’s pickup truck, we get a lengthy road trip sequence with some basic “hey look, celebs are actually entitled asshole” moments, crowned off by Paulo whipping his hung dick out for a roadside leak (which she gleefully snaps).
After arriving at his secluded place in the province past nightfall (and quite literally seeing him beckon to her in a vision), she sneaks in after Paulo and immediately catches him snorting some drugs.
At this point, with the presence of onscreen cock and drugs and the setting basically screaming for it, it all but confirms the next hour and fifteen minutes must answer the burning question now present: is Disheveled Paulo Avelino actually going to bang this defenseless high school girl?
(and possibly risk his real life persona in the process!?)
DON’T MEET YOUR HEROES
This reviewer doesn’t know whether the masses of Paulo Avelino’s IRL fans assume that he is too pure to smoke, toke, and cuss freely offscreen, but in this particular Fan Girl’s case, her first encounter with a high, enraged Paulo is enough to spook her into trying, and failing, to escape. Eventually both parties calm down-he wants to avoid a scandal, she wants to see what more can happen-so the offer to stay the night is made and beers are offered.
Paulo constantly oscillates between resigned Nice Guy and pressed at having this underage girl crash his secret fuckpad-and gets even more unhinged as the film nears its climax. Aside from some slightly inexplicable confessions later on, his character and actions are realistic enough. If you ever wanted to see a Pinoy actor play himself and actually have the balls to say something with the role, this is it.
The dark and dilapidated house where it all happens is only weakly explained. It does its job in isolating our leads from any redeeming factors but we still wonder why Paulo Avelino basically picked a shack in the woods for his dirty deeds. It would be interesting what kind of oppressive atmosphere the film could have come up with even if it was an actual functioning home befitting a celebrity (something like Get Out or Ex Machina maybe?)
Another thing that doesn’t work as well is whenever our fan girl retreats into a daydream-state where she transforms the brusque, wild-haired man in front of her into the cleancut matinee idol she fell in love with. These mind’s eye/alternate reality moments can feel a bit unearned because in the same interaction(s), she often presents herself as perfectly lucid and in the moment enough to flirt with him-yes, she’s obsessed but she doesn’t really come off as crazy.
Aside from that nitpick, Charlie Dizon really shines when she begins to relax and size up Paulo in return, she has no problem at all matching the performance of the veteran actor. From her comedic “yes sir” timing to portraying the smoldering thirst every celeb-obsessed fan lowkey harbors deep inside, the rookie actress is great to watch and undoubtedly the true star of this movie.
THE UGLY TRUTH
After meandering around the question of will they or won’t they do the dirty, the final third of the film handles it very well and answers it in a poignant manner that almost seems to ask the viewer: is this what you want? Is this how you expected it to go? What did you think really?
A lot of exposition (aka sitting and talking) happens here as well, along with an epilogue-like ending that feels like it could either have been cut out or integrated into the plot earlier on. Even if it does add a strong dose of social commentary it’s very blunt compared to the presence of the other themes the film touches on: privilege, escapism, celebrity obsessed culture, the patriarchy, even a DU30 callout (which is no way unintentional), it’s all in there. One thing Fan Girl cannot be accused of is being afraid to speak its mind, and when it comes to the film’s core, a coming-of-age, girl-meets-idol story, it is definitely on point.
If this is the start of a new direction for direk Jadaone, then it’s very promising as her romcom work showed continuous growth and refinement and delved into lots of interesting scenarios. Hopefully we don’t get more movies like Fan Girl only during the MMFF season!
