The curious case of the ‘Flower Girl’

We all may have to stop (or we probably should stop) referring to actor Sue Ramirez as the girlfriend of sometime actor Dominic Roque as if that’s her best distinction (even as they are both proud of their romantic relationship).

We should instead start referring to Ramirez as the country’s most daring and boldest movie actress. Eat your hearts out, VMX female stars!

In the film Flower Girl, slated to open in theaters on 18 June, Ramirez portrays a character who raises her hemline several times, stands up fully naked at least once to reveal that she doesn’t have not only an underwear but also her most private part. 

For sure, what was shown in the gala premiere recently at Gateway Mall 2 in Cubao, Quezon City, was approved by the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board. The people there rated it PG16, meaning the citizens of this country who are below the age of 16 can watch it only with an adult companion.

Flower Girl is a roaring comedy with lots of visual and sound effects. 

Ramirez’s character, Ena, was not born that way, please! She is a sanitary napkin endorser-slash-modern-day Filipina who has been busy balancing her personal and professional life. 

Her genital disappears and reappears because she was cursed by a babaylan transwoman whom she confronted in a ladies’ room to leave because she narrow-mindedly believes that transwomen are not women at all, and she can’t do her thing even within a cubicle knowing that there’s a man dressed as a woman primping theirselves in the mirrors right outside. Karen Kaladkaren portrays the vibrant babaylan.

The babaylan is a spiritual personality, a high priest or priestess in non-Christian religions in our archipelago. The male ones are described as usually effeminate cross-dressers and slather make-up on their faces to complete their womanly looks. The babaylan are not known to hang out in crowded urban areas, but, well, Flower Girl, is 21st century tale. It’s an imaginative concoction for the cinema. 

The film, produced by CreaZion Studios, humorously tackles gender identity and narrowmindedness of the supposedly liberal and liberated.

Ena refers to her most private part as “poochy,” and at some point in the film, it becomes an animated character she meets on the street and assertively introduces itself as Ena’s missing genital.

The film plays clever and naughty by presenting  a scene early on framed by a shape that resembles the female genitalia! The scene has a female doctor elucidating that the female genital is capable of closing itself due to its owner’s highly stressed condition. The short medical spiel transpires soon after Ena’s naked boyfriend disgustingly screams in the middle of their intimacies that Ena’s most private part is missing. He grabs his shirt and pants and scampers from the scam!

Martin del Rosario portrays the boyfriend. The actor transformed himself into a hot stuff by appearing nude frontally in a recent play adaptation of the film Anino sa  Dilim, written and directed by Jun Lana, with his romantic and creative partner Perci Intalan, more than a decade ago. The play adaptation was directed by Tux Rutaquio and staged at PETA Theater Center in QC.

Lana and Intalan are actually the executive producers of Flower Girl, directed by Fatrick Tabada from his own script. (And, yes, Tabada spells his first name with an F, not P).

To strengthen the film’s karmic justification about disappearing private assets, it also has a male character whose property has disappeared after he insulted a transman. He becomes Ena’s lover after she holds an invitational session for a coterie of machos who responded to her ad searching for a serious lover. 

Once more with feelings, she raises her hemline to show what she does not have. 

She finds a latecomer to the event the serious lover who sticks with her despite her revelation. He eventually confesses that he, too, has a missing body part. Jameson Blake portrays the persistent beau.

Will they live happily ever after? Will they both realize that living and loving can be meaningful even with missing body parts?

Ramirez seems to be a favorite of the partner filmmakers Lana and Intalan to portray a woman afflicted with rare ailment. Flower Girl marks the second time for them to cast her in a role that has a rare sickness. The first one was in 2018 in Ang Babaeng Allergic sa Wi-Fi. They also had her teamed up with Blake, though with Marcus Paterson as the third wheel in the young love story. There really is an ailment about being extremely sensitive to electro-magnetic field. 

In Flower Girl, Ramirez’s character is allergic to men fully appearing as female. Ena puts up with her transwoman production assistant only because the trans is patient with her and seemingly fully reliable, and always looks elegant. Ena always doubts that the PA is all-woman and insists she is a woman though her most private part is that of a man. (Maxie Andreison, the drag race champ, and who used to be known as a young gay actor Jbhot Galang, plays the PA).

It’s quite admirable for Ramirez to accept incredible roles which she credibly portrays. She really is an underrated actress possibly because she doesn’t seem fit to be in a loveteam on screen, though in real life she seems to enjoy romantic dalliances. 

The Fil-American beauty (real name: Sue Anna Ramirez Garina Dodd) was in a serene romance with the Negros Occidental-based actor-politician Javi Benitez for four years. And for almost a year now, she has been dating with the sometime actor Dominic Roque who was engaged for sometime with Bea Alonzo, who seems to be fully immersed with business magnate Vince Co. Roque seems to be seriously in love with Ramirez and seems to be better known to be his girlfriend than being a versatile actress. She seems to be not bothered by that reputation.