Cover It’s not every day you watch a rom-com that opens with a woman losing her vagina by curse. Welcome to ‘Flower Girl’ (Poster: CreaZion Studio)
It’s not every day you watch a rom-com that opens with a woman losing her vagina by curse. Welcome to ‘Flower Girl’ (Poster: CreaZion Studio)
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A rom-com with drag queens, bathroom curses and a missing vagina. Welcome to the wild, weird and oddly wise world of ‘Flower Girl’—fair warning, spoilers ahead
A cursory glance at the premise might make you hesitate: a woman wakes up without her vagina.
But that’s exactly where Flower Girl begins: Ena (Sue Ramirez), a peppy sanitary napkin endorser with a knack for Instagram feed-perfect content, makes the mistake of insulting a trans woman fairy in a public restroom. The next morning, she wakes up minus one important body part.
The quest: find true love, or genuine self-love, before an enchanted flower wilts or her “poochy” is gone forever. It’s a pruned-down variation on classic fairy‑tale endangerment, recast in a bright, comic jingle.
It’s the kind of wild premise that sounds like a throwaway gag. But in Flower Girl, written and directed by Fatrick Tabada (Patay na si Hesus, Si Chedeng at Si Apple), it becomes something more: a sharp, candy-coated commentary on casual transphobia and the shaky ways identity gets defined.
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And comedy is this Cebuano queer writer-director’s sharpest tool. He stages a gynaecologist serenading a vagina, and a woman earnestly addressing her “poochy”—all within the first 15 minutes. It’s toilet humour, yes, but Tabada insists it’s purposeful, delivering sexual and gender discourse in a riotous, accessible way.
The film is already on a roll. Following a string of buzzworthy screenings in the Philippines—where it just opened June 18 in cinemas—Flower Girl was announced as the Closing Film of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. Its international premiere is set for July 27, with both Tabada and Ramirez scheduled to attend.
Sue Ramirez, one of local cinema’s more quietly versatile leads, brings a surprising amount of heart to the role. Her Ena is all surface confidence at first but as the film unfolds, so does the character, who grapples with questions about autonomy, identity and validation. It helps that Ramirez knows how to balance slapstick and sincerity, keeping the tone buoyant even when the story edges toward self-reflection.
For all its riotous humour, Flower Girl has more on its mind than crude jokes. Tabada has said he hopes the film leaves audiences, bigots included, with more than a laugh and a lesson in empathy. And that’s where the film is most effective. It uses comedy to lower defences, making audiences squirm and think in equal measure.
Much of this is down to its savvy supporting cast. Drag Race Philippines alum Maxie Andreison shines as Mel, Ena’s sharp-witted confidante, while Jervi Wrightson all but steals the film as a mysterious magical adviser. Martin del Rosario and Jameson Blake round out the ensemble as possible love interests.
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What it is, at its best, is a film about unlearning. About how we police bodies and spaces. About why identity is never just physical. And about how humour, sometimes crude, sometimes sly, can make these conversations easier to have.
Not everything lands. The second act loses pace, some jokes veer too far into lowbrow. There are moments when the toilet humour overwhelms the film’s more nuanced observations. And while the film touches on trans experiences, it remains mostly filtered through Ena’s perspective, which may leave some wanting to explore deeper.
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It’s a rare rom-com with teeth. What it lacks in polish, it makes up for in intent and bravery. And when it works, Flower Girl feels like exactly the kind of rom-com the local industry needs more of: unapologetic, risky and willing to offend if it means starting a conversation. Tabada takes big swings with his feature-length directorial debut, delivering a film that both entertains and pushes.
It’s a messy, campy, coming-of-age comedy that’s as interested in self-acceptance as it is in laughs. Yes, it’s crude at times, but it’s never thoughtless. Tabada’s Flower Girl makes clear that sometimes you need to shock to educate. And audiences, in turn, may walk away giggling, thinking and more aware.
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Syrah is Tatler Philippines’ Power & Purpose editor, where she spotlights extraordinary journeys shaping the Philippines and Asia. She covers business, innovation, impact, and culture—chasing the people, ideas and forces shaping how we live and think today.
