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Lifestyle

Here Comes the Bride is a beautiful crazy movie


FOR the first time a corny English title for a Filipino film sounded right. Here Comes the Bride, a film scripted and directed by Palanca award-winning playwright Chris Martinez, is a crazy film and therefore worthy of a crazy title. Yes, crazy, but definitely beautiful. You see, I look down on local films with terrible English titles like ‘Til There Was You, Don’t Give Up On Us, ‘Til Death Do Us Part, All My Life and of course, the recently shown You to Me Are Everything. But Here Comes the Bride, a Quantum Films production co-produced by Star Cinema and OctoArts Films, is different from many run-of-the-mill movies out there. The storyline of Here Comes the Bride is very simple. All the characters are preparing to attend a beach wedding. On their way to the venue, they pass by the Magnetic Highway, the part of the road where even if you turn off the motor of your car you will still move forward due to a magnetic pull. During this time, there is also a lunar eclipse. And during the eclipse, there on the Magnetic Highway, the characters’ cars bump into each other and the souls of five of them transfer from one body to another. The virginal bride’s (Angelica Panganiban) soul enters the body of her middle-aged ninang, (Eugene Domingo) a middle-aged single lawyer. The ninang’s soul enters the body of an Ilonggo yaya (Tuesday Vargas). Yaya’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. This is the film’s plot point one, the part in an Aristotelian three-act structure where the real story begins. Imagine the havoc wreaked by this body or soul swapping to the beach wedding. The ninang who is actually the bride is declared insane and gets detained in the hospital with a straight jacket when she insists to the bride’s mother that she is her daughter. The yaya forgets her Ilonggo accent and begins quoting from the Constitution and other laws. The patriarch who is now enjoying the relatively young body of the gay beautician is flirting with young women, to the dismay of the gay’s friends. The virginal bride who is really the screaming gay beautician is no longer acting like a proper girl; instead of preparing for the wedding, she goes to the beach and flirts with the guys. She even invites a man to go to her room for a quick encounter. Luckily, the man is the bride’s groom, played by the ultra-handsome and ultra-sexy Tom Rodriguez who first became famous in a reality TV show. So how do you end a story like this? The five victims and some of their supporters ask for help from Kuya Kim Atienza, who is luckily at the wedding. Kuya Kim’s solution: the five characters have to subject themselves to another car accident in the Magnetic Highway during another eclipse. Alas, the next eclipse will happen in two years, so all five together with their loved ones decide to put themselves in one house and take care of each other’s body. The virginal bride possessed by the sex-hungry gay beautician has to be tied up inside the house, or else he will overuse the bride’s body. After two years, during the eclipse, they were again on the Magnetic Highway, this time in a colorful Volkswagen. The car-crashing ritual is coordinated by Kuya Kim using a megaphone, who is very serious in his task. This scene really sent the audience rolling on the floor with laughter. It takes at least three repeated crashes before each soul is returned to the proper body. At this point, my stomach was aching from laughing too much. This brings us to plot point two, where the situation in the film is returned to the situation before plot point one. Then the film is ready for “The End." The good thing about Martinez as a filmmaker is that he is capable of solidly handling the classical three-act structure. The narrative of Here Comes the Bride, in spite of the many characters (played by brilliant actors so the tendency to outshine each other in a scene is always there), is clear and tight, a trait that is often wanting in many local films handled by blockbuster directors who do not have any concept of plot. It is indeed refreshing to watch films written by talented writers who are aware of the rudiments of excellent narrative writing. I was impressed by Angelica Panganiban a few years ago in Santa Santita, an excellent digital film directed by Laurice Guillen about an easy-go-lucky young woman who reluctantly takes over her mother’s place as a peddler of prayers in the Quiapo church. Miraculously all her prayers were answered and she became famous. I cannot forget the scene where Panganiban confesses to a priest played by the late Danny Delgado, “Bakit ako pa, father? Hindi yata bagay sa akin." (Why me, father? I don’t deserve it.) With Here Comes the Bride, I have become a certified Panganiban fan. She is more beautiful now, sexier, and has blossomed into a wonderful actress, be it in drama or in comedy. Her performance as a virginal bride possessed by the soul of a screaming faggot beautician played by the hilarious John Lapuz floored me. Her rendition of a man-hungry ultra-extrovert gay trapped in a young, sexy, and beautiful woman’s body is simply perfect. The scene where she is being chased by other characters in the resort so that she will not “use" the body of the bride really made me laugh so hard I thought I would have a heart attack. She is running with all her strength, running for her life. She is asked by the group where she is going. She replies, “Maghahanap ng lalaki! Pagamit naman nitong katawan kahit once lang!" The other actors in the film are also excellent. John Lapus is hilarious in a beautiful and fabulous way. And then of course, there’s Eugene Domingo who always puts intellect and wit in her acting, especially when she is doing comedy. As a versatile actress, she can also do drama excellently like in the film Ploning. That is why I am so impressed with Panganiban’s ability to handle a scene successfully with Domingo, who has the natural capacity of stealing scenes from the bigger stars in any movie. The strength of Martinez’s films and screenplays are the witty and funny dialogues. His comedy never resorts to toilet humor or slapstick. Instead, his funniness tickles the mind. Philippine movies done by comedy kings like Dolphy and Joey de Leon have a lot to learn from him. Before Martinez ventured into filmmaking, he was already an accomplished playwright. His two plays, Last Order sa Penguin and Welcome to Intelstar, that I was able to watch are very memorable. The dialogues are so witty and funny that I cannot help but compare him to the adorable Oscar Wilde. Here Comes the Bride is a respite from the series of brainless comedy films in Philippine cinema. Chris Martinez (and I may add, Eugene Domingo and John Lapuz) is a fabulous gift of rain to the aesthetically and intellectually parched Philippine showbizlandia. I cannot wait to see his next film. – YA, GMANews.TV