On their way to a beach wedding the guests pass by the Magnetic Highway, the part of the road where cars are pulled forward by magnetic force. As they traverse this section of the highway, a lunar eclipse causes their cars to crash into one another. The souls of five of the characters transfer from one body to another.
The virginal bride’s (Angelica Panganiban) soul enters the body of her ninang (a wedding godmother, played here by Eugene Domingo), a middle-aged single lawyer. The ninang’s soul enters the body of an Ilonggo babysitter (Tuesday Vargas). The babysitter’s soul enters the body of the sickly but rich patriarch (Jaime Fabregas). The patriarch’s soul enters the body of a screaming gay beautician (John Lapus). And the soul of the gay beautician enters the body of the virginal bride.
Chaos reigns — the ninang who is actually the bride is declared insane and is detained in a hospital when she insists to the bride’s mother that she is her daughter. The babysitter forgets her Ilonggo accent and begins quoting from the Constitution and other laws. The patriarch who is now enjoying the young body of the gay beautician flirts with young women, to the dismay of his gay friends. The virginal bride who is really the screaming gay beautician is no longer acting like a prude; instead of preparing for the wedding, she goes to the beach and flirts with the guys.
Chris Martinez navigates this plot with dexterity, handling the transformations with flair. The comedy arises from characters behaving against type, becoming people that they would never have contemplated. But the meaning of the film is somewhat poetic and open to interpretation — are these transformed beings the inner selves of their characters, or their innermost fantasies, or are they metaphors of a parallel universe?
As in the earlier film which he wrote (Joyce Bernal’s Kimmy Dora about two diametrically different twin sisters) Martinez has uncorked the genie of “The Other”, and seems in no hurry to put it back in the bottle.
Roger Garcia