Judy Ann Santos: Someone Great for Cinema 3rd Anniversary Business Mirror Life Cover Story
By Tito Genova Valiente titovaliente@yahoo.com
One cannot be a superstar or a star for all seasons now when the mainstream film industry is truly dying. The amount of celebrity that one can create for the industry is an illusion. Gone are the big production units that regularly churn out films each month. Gone are the starmakers who mold unknowns into silver-screen gods and goddesses. Come to think of it, such terms went out of date together with the splendor of Technicolor and Cinemascope.
If you are part of TV, a technology and a culture that seem to be all over the media space, and you happen to make movies, then you get the mirror effect, where the reflection creates an extra space in a vapid, yawning emptiness. The Filipino film industry has tried to nurture itself in the dream world of an expanding universe of glam and grand illusion; in reality, it is caught in this mass about to collapse into a black hole of insignificance.
This is not the movie world that people used to write about. New technologies have done it in and the primal victims are the so-called movie stars. To this world, Judy Ann Santos finds herself maturing into a fine actress. It is a complex world to grow in. There are no more role models for her to emulate. Vilma Santos has become a politician and a milk endorser. Whether she likes it or not, Vilma Santos—who made shrillness and hysteria an acknowledged art form—will now be measured according to the yardstick of politics and not by the aesthetics of acting. When Vilma appears on TV, the accolade really is not about her as an actress but in the fact that she has become a politician. This is a role graduation that appeals to people who are educated in the values of bad politics. Will Judy Ann then go into politics?
Somewhere out there are actresses like Lorna Tolentino and Maricel Soriano. These two are the closest we have of actors who have tried to develop their approaches to delineating characters. If younger actresses are looking for an acting path to follow, Lorna and Maricel are ideal templates. There is a problem here, though. Look back to their films and, for all the awards between them, the two remain as fine-acting blueprints aching for construction. In another generation, the two could already look to films that in their age will push them out of the plateau where they are now. I believe nothing of the sort will happen.
The present condition of the Filipino film industry holds no promise for Lorna Tolentino or Maricel Soriano. At most, they will have to contend with television. Again, there is nothing wrong with TV, and yet, there is indeed something wrong with Philippine television. It has remained in the ’60s mode of sitcoms and games. In such a situation, believe me, we cannot expect characters that will task the thinking process of actors. Nor will that mode ever give rise to stories that open wide vistas to knowing or asking questions about our existence. Films with its natural sweep and inborn capacity to expand a narrative are still different from stories that are edited to accommodate announcements about the perfect shampoo and the most effective insecticide.
In this atmosphere, Judy Ann Santos’s celebrity stands out. It is marked by real gravitas. This rise is unusual for a person who, like Nora Aunor, had to suffer the perception of people—including intelligentsia that includes critics—that she is nothing but a popular actress who could act a bit, win awards every now and then, and go back to silly projects. In her early days in show business, writers taunted her fashion sense, her markedly healthy build, even her performances. She was seen as much too “common.” If that spelled success at the box office because more people empathized with her, it had a duplicitous impact on her presence in the industry. To be common all throughout is not good.
Nora Aunor also had the commonness, but she parlayed it in roles which articulated that ordinary woman into a tragedienne par excellence. Nora was able to do that because she was the woman with common beginnings but an uncommon destiny. Judy Ann did not have this dramatic beginning. Except for a mother who left for abroad to work, her family was not exactly impoverished. There was no subsistence in her past that would make her present surplus awe-inspiring.
If there is something about Judy Ann Santos that cannot be disputed, however, it is her overwhelming popularity and an equally overwhelming number of fans willing to stand behind her. That status has given her the unique privilege of being addressed by those who admire her and those who write about her as “Juday.” The name has the sound of a familiar address, giving way to a sense of ownership that the industry has over her and her personality.
The personality of Judy Ann Santos was not always this expansive. It all began, I believe, when she started doing roles that were unexpected for someone her age and accessibility. The first of these films was Sabel (2004) from the screenplay of Ricky Lee and the direction of Joel Lamangan. Complex and dark, her Sabel is a nun counseling inmates who ends up getting raped by an inmate. Later, her rapist discovers that the nun has another personality. A role like that can push young performers to go to town with a showy portrayal. Judy Ann did not go the way of beginners. She played for mystery and maturity and the critics liked it. Garnering nominations from practically all the award-giving bodies, Sabel would earn for Santos the Urian Best Actress.
The following years, Judy Ann would prove her mettle also in comedy via that breathtaking romp that was Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo. Directed by Joey Javier Reyes, the film would give her some three major awards: Famas, Luna (from her peers) and the PMPC Star award. Locally, that was an achievement in a film circle where comic roles are not seen as heavy enough to demonstrate one’s acting gift.
From comedy, Judy Ann jumped to horror in Tofel Lee’s Ouija. Stylized and pop, the film would unite her with Jolina Magdangal, her erstwhile rival, if we are to believe tabloid gossip. The film received numerous awards and, although Judy Ann would not win any major plum for it, it signaled the development of an impressive filmography. Judy Ann seems to be making the correct moves. While her peers were caught in ordinary films that were strong on PR and controversies, this actress appeared to be in full control of her film destiny. Or what is expressed to be her way of charting her journey as an artist.
The observers were not wrong. In the early part of 2008, Judy Ann Santos ventured into coproducing a film. There was no novelty there; actresses of her stature have gone into production. But the film was getting solid buzz. The film was being shot in a far-off island: Cuyo in Palawan. That meant some daring. And a deep pocket. Then came the news that it was an indie. An expensive one.
The producers, together with Judy Ann, had to explain that it was not an indie. The film, Ploning, was being shot via the traditional mainstream 33-mm technology. There was a justification for all the buzz: Reports described how unusual the film was. Completed, the audience and the critics would agree: The film was unusual. It was also excellent.
The film Ploning was inspired by an old song, the story crafted from memory. It had an abstract structure, where characters disappear and reappear in different forms. In the story, the individuals grow old and are never the same again. The rhythm of poignancy ruled the narrative, which was about an old town and how individuals in that community tried to cope with love and its loss. The filmmakers were confident with their leading lady, Judy Ann as Ploning, that they had her acting opposite Gina Pareño and Tessie Tomas, whose roles gravitated around extreme poles. Gina had the flamboyant part of a woman seemingly wronged by fate and whose griefs she tried to make bigger than fate; Tessie had the quieter role of a woman who had time and acceptance on her side. An ordinary actor would have died in between those grand-opera voices, but Judy Ann breezed through her role. Or she was so compelling she made it like she was wind or air passing through the village. Her Ploning was wracked with pain, but no one else really knew about it. She was hurting but she went out to appease raging passions and broken dreams in others.
Placid and proper, Ploning was a terrifying role because of its simplicity, even for someone in her 30s. Fearless and peerless, that was what the industry saw in Judy Ann, as a producer and as an actress. She was someone in control. Again, the industry was reminded of Nora Aunor as a precedent. In search of good films to do, she went on to produce them—and, of course, to star in them. Strangely, when those films—Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos and Bona are just two such precious examples—were released, the press that was coming out for Nora continued to portray her as someone with a simple mind, of simplistic thinking. Like the industry that never got to grips with her genius, Nora would go on to make more movies that troubled and dazzled the industry.
Nora’s record as a producer-actor or simply as an actor will be tough to better. But they are always great to emulate. The unwise and unsophisticated Nora Aunor, the woman, is the portrait of wisdom and sophistication when it comes to her arts. It is not an exaggeration to say that if there is one person who might come close to her, it is Judy Ann Santos.
The film Ploning arrived when the mainstream film industry had nothing to show that would merit at least some sympathies as it peters away. The indies were ruling the land and showing that they had earned such ascendancy. Growing audience and awards abroad were the validation. The film may not have made boffo box office, but it was reportedly well-received everywhere it went. It is the country’s entry to the Oscar’s Best Foreign Film race.
With Ploning and Judy Ann Santos in it, the most mainstream of actors you could think of, there was a surge of interest in big films. Like the rains that were never missed because there was Ploning (a line in the movie), this evolution of Judy Ann makes us wish that she would be more daring and go ahead and forget the boundaries of the Filipino film industry.
