All dressed up with no place to go

Film review: The Girl In The Orange Dress

MANILA, Philippines — Rye (Jericho Rosales) is the most famous actor in the country. Winning acting awards and making box-office history, he is hounded by legions of fans everywhere he goes, and the movie press reports every move he makes. He is Piolo Pascual, John Lloyd Cruz and Alden Richards combined.

Anna (Jessy Mendiola), on the other hand, is Mademoiselle Ordinaire. A working class girl who belongs to a clique of four females, she is different from her friends in that she is conservative: She dresses modestly, has no liking for “gimmicks” and hardly drinks. She also has a deep-seated disdain for celebrity types.

One fateful day, Anna wakes up half-naked in a strange hotel room with a man she does not recognize. With no memory of how she got there, and in a state of near panic, she tries to sneak out, but her erstwhile bedmate wakes up. She says she has to leave pronto as her friends would be looking for her. He says it might be a bad idea at the moment; when pressed for the reason, the man turns the television on. The news is about him, Rye Del Rosario. It then dawns upon her that the man who brought him to the hotel is famous beyond belief. But wait, there’s more: So is she, suddenly, as The Girl In The Orange Dress, as a video of the two of them checking into the hotel becomes viral on social media. 

Now they are trapped: Thousands of rabid fans and tens of dozens of extremely inquisitive movie reporters from every major news organization have surrounded the hotel, all wanting to know who The Girl In The Orange Dress is. The need to know gains added urgency as it is also Rye’s birthday, and everyone and his dog seems to want to know who he is spending his birthday with. The entire nation is glued to their television sets (and their smart phones, and their tablets), lapping up every clue, every conjecture as to the identity of the mystery woman.  

In the meantime, publicity-allergic Anna feels a palpable need to escape the hotel’s premises. It is in her efforts to flee the fans and the paparazzi around which the plot revolves. In the process of dodging the madding crowd, this being a rom-com, Rye and Anna fall in love.

Obviously written as a farce, the movie takes place in practically one location (the hotel) during the course of one day. During that time, the writer places the two leads in one zany situation after another. In order to render her incognito, he tells her to ditch the orange dress and diverts the attention of one chambermaid after another so he could steal another dress. They employ decoys to mislead the media as to their actual hotel room, using the stairs to shuttle between floors. They are forced to join tango lessons to evade pursuing press people, and even gate-crash a stranger’s wedding reception. These endeavors lead to highjinks galore for the protagonists. Add to the mix Anna’s best friend who is totally obsessed with Rye, and who harbors hope of becoming his girlfriend, and you have a good potential for a madcap movie. To top it all, A-list actors like Jennylyn Mercado, Derek Ramsey and Luis Manzano playing cameos, and real-life showbiz media men like Boy Abunda playing themselves, add to the film’s fun factor.

And to be fair, many of the situation comedies work, and a lot of the lines are truly funny. There is also that clear chemistry between the leads that makes the storyline credible. Mendiola, for one, is gorgeous in all of her scenes, her extreme close-ups fully showing off her mestiza beauty, which makes it plausible that the country’s biggest movie star would fall for her. She also plays her part straight in an ocean of absurdity, keeping her character fully grounded. Rosales is charming as a celebrity with both feet on the ground, exuding a cool nonchalance that carries his role through. It is a refreshing pairing, and an engaging one to watch as they feed off each other’s emotions.

The movie also has a lot to say about today’s media, both social and mainstream: How, for people, perception is reality; the uncontrollability of hysteria for celebrities; media’s utter lack of concern for an individual’s privacy; and how the broad appeal of show business cuts through all social classes.

What ultimately holds the movie back, though, is a want of energy. The director valiantly tried, but he could never get the movie into the kind of pacing that a farce requires. Thus, there are moments of tedium that break up the rhythm and destroy the tension that the plot desperately needs. And the acting is too relaxed to make the audience fully immerse itself with empathy into the frantic circumstances of the leads. The result is that, while the premise is promising, the movie ended up going in circles. And quite slowly at that. 

On the whole, The Girl In The Orange Dress is an entertaining romp into the world of celebrity, a modern fairy tale ala-Notting Hill (1999) but in reverse, and a commentary on today’s media. Given more oomph and dynamism, it could have gone somewhere farther. Pity. For as it is, it was all dressed up but with no place to go.

(Under the direction of Jay Bello, the film is produced by Star Cinema, Quantum Films and MJM Films.)