Shift sells itself as an offbeat romance film, about the boyish Estela (Yeng Constantino) and the proudly gay Trevor (Felix Roco). While this is its heart, it is not its spirit.
The story follows Estela more than it does Trevor. Once, strolling through the quaint shops at the Cubao Expo, she spots a Che Guevara portrait, the bold reds of the artwork matching her own fiery dyed hair; she asks Trevor to take her picture with it. This is more than a whimsy: she studied sociology in school, and she knows what Che stands for. There are no flashbacks in Shift, but the film teases with details here and there, and we figure out that she used to be an activist—a rough, full-blooded tibak, a past life that corroborates with her boyish manners.
Now she spends her days, and nights, in call centers, taking up jobs to sustain her impractical passions. She answers a phone interview once, with remarkable confidence and skill—but underneath that compelling corporate talk is the contradiction between her past convictions and her present place. She keeps this simmering irony under wraps, mostly unspoken, though it manifests in her lethargic attitude to work: she often comes in late, and her performance has not been up to standard.
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