Mang Rudy, the widowed woodcarver, wields an iron hand over his three daughters: the fun-loving but rebellious Grace, the youngest, who goes through the throes of adjusting to married life; the feisty and headstrong Lourdes, the middle daughter, who succumbs to an extra-marital affair; and the subservient and discriminated on eldest, Jess, a lesbian who brings home her girlfriend to take care of the father after he succumbs to a heart attack.

August 1950. The fortunes of three impoverished friends and their families abruptly change after an airplane crashes in a nearby mountain. They rush to the crash site along with all the villagers, not to help the victims but to plunder their valuables. A dead American passenger carried a large amount of money in his briefcase, which Mesiong, Ponsoy, and Jamin find and avariciously keep for themselves. But the town mayor gets greedy and, with his hirelings, abducts the three to divest them of their booty.

When plain orphan Elsa begins having visions of the Virgin Mary, the rest of the residents of her isolated village find themselves questioning their own beliefs and values. Soon, Elsa is healing people with a variety of ailments. As word of this phenomenon spreads, tourists, pilgrims, patients and a documentary filmmaker all arrive on a quest to partake in the miracle.