Fan Girl

Schoolgirl Jane adores Pinoy heart-throb Paulo Avelino. After a public appearance to promote his latest melodrama stint, Jane manages to hide in the back of his car – to later find herself in an old mansion where Paulo lives like a melancholic doomed soul from a gothic tale, or the beast waiting for his beauty. In a splendid feat of acting derring-do, Paulo Avelino plays a self-deprecatingly sinister fictional version of himself, essentially a creation of Jane’s imagination. For, once we find ourselves in that almost-empty, a bit decrepit, palatial home of the star, the film becomes a head-trip into the mind of a young woman dealing with her angst and desires. Such meta-movie experiments are nothing new to Antoinette Jadaone, but never before did she offer so many twists, turns and levels, and such a long and complex arc of aesthetic and psychological development in a single work. Wow! (International Film Festival Rotterdam)