Metro Manila Film Festival

‘Fan Girl’ review: Thoroughly mature work

Oggs Cruz

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‘Fan Girl’ review: Thoroughly mature work

FAN GIRL. Paulo Avelino and Charlie Dizon in 'Fan Girl.'

Screenshot from Black Sheep YouTube

'Fan Girl', despite its darker tone is not really a departure for Antoinette Jadaone

The women of Antoinette Jadaone’s films are all dreamers.

Whether they aspire for recognition for decades of unsung work as a bit player like Lilia Cuntapay in Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay (2013) or the ideal look, weight, and disposition to have thriving careers and love lives in modern Manila like the three protagonists of Beauty in a Bottle (204), they are all united by a goal of fitting into perceptions of success, established by the industry or society they belong to. 

Not really a departure

Even the seemingly trivial love stories Jadaone has crafted are not populated by women who are preoccupied by the affairs of the heart, despite their incessant pining and trips to the karaoke bar to literally sing their hearts out. The hopeless romantics and freshly broken hearts of Jadaone’s love stories are shaped by their ambitions for the future and flawed pasts, all of which are influenced by the men they’ve loved, are loving, or will love. 

In a way, Jadaone’s love stories are never forgetful of the fact that gender is integral to the heterosexual romances she conjures and as such, all of its dimensions, conflicts, and repercussions should matter.

Fan Girl, despite its darker tone and hesitation to succumb to easy humor, is not really a departure for Jadaone.

Fan Girl only amplifies her preoccupation to occupy her work with a discourse on the female condition. Her entry to the sensitive subject matter is through the safety of familiarity, using the world of show business to jump-start a narrative about the titular fan (Charlie Dizon) who in her desire to get close to her idol, Paulo Avelino (as himself), discovers not just his demons but also all the skeletons in his well-guarded closet. 

The film, just like the celebrity it skews to serve its purpose of revealing gross truths, is a vicious wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is work that starts as a sometimes pleasurable descent into the dangerous whims of an impressionable teenager before evolving into mostly painful exposition of the pandemic that blind idolatry is a symptom of.

Angry and precise

This is Jadaone in her angriest and most precise. 

Previously, whether it is a result of her working within the constructs of the genres she had to pursue, Jadaone would only echo her hopes for Filipino women by granting them the choice to wiggle out of the stereotypical happy endings where they end up with men. In Fan Girl, she showcases a woman obliviously hypnotized by the patriarchy. Her protagonist worships men, quickly whipping out her smartphone to immortalize her first encounter with the phallus even if she risks being discovered. She makes the most illogical of decisions, always preferring subservience to the man she adores even if it puts her dignity or her life at risk.

In fact, the illogic that consumes most of the narrative can be criticized as being too unrealistic, with characters who act too conveniently out of reason.

However, as Fan Girl draws to a close, retreating from the fantasy that turned into a nightmare to showcase the realities of its wide-eyed protagonist, it unshrouds the rationale behind the irrationality of everything that preceded it. Reality, with its abundance of abusive men and national leaders whose faces are plastered everywhere to serve as reminders of the woeful normalcy of chauvinism, is the root cause of the protagonist’s hypnosis and refusal to immediately see her idol as the devil that he is. 

The film’s precious final minutes is the not just political but also very human statement that needs to be heard, and Jadaone thankfully does not go for subtlety. She packs her film’s conclusion with as much signs, symbols, emotions, and frustrations as she can, and it most definitely resounds.

‘Fan Girl’ review: Thoroughly mature work
Relevant and necessary

While Dizon’s performance is truly a wonder, it is Avelino who also bravely lends his persona to add precious verity in Jadaone’s discourse who completes the statement. His deft transformation from the charismatic victim of life’s cruelties to the inexcusable and unforgivable monster fulfils the requirement of translating into a fully formed character the complexities of a possibly toxic man. 

Fan Girl is thoroughly mature work. 

It is relevant and necessary, especially in this day and age where questionable idols do not just mouth quotable quotes to earn kisses from their leading women; they also govern. – Rappler.com

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