Katya: Body-baring is just a career phase

To say that fickle winds blow hard on showbusiness often seem an understatement, especially when one looks at the landscape of the bold movie genre. It is a boulevard of broken dreams and unanswered prayers, these of the many men and women who, in their aspiration for stardom, gave their all –literally and figuratively – to cinema and to the public that spit them out as soon as their prurience had been sated.

It is this landscape that Katya Santos now enters with the upcoming Viva Films presentation, the Mac Alejandre-directed Sukdulan where she engages Raymund Bagatsing and newcomer Carlo Maceda in encounters steamy enough to fog up car windows.

At 20, this alluring Venus is certainly old enough not to reduce conservatives to hyperventilating and yet still young and nubile enough to appeal to many a male libido and give Rica Peralejo and Maui Taylor, also Viva Films’ frontliners in the bold movie genre, good competition. Still, given the notorious history of the genre, one can only wonder why Katya, who not only has done plenty of work in films and on television but also appears to have a good measure of smarts, would jump onto the so-called steamy bandwagon.

Well, maybe it is precisely because of those smarts. "I made the decision to go bold not lightly, she says. "I thought hard and considered where I could take my career from there. Actually, Viva had been keen on launching me as a bold actress long before all this hype now surrounding the release of Sukdulan but at the time I wasn’t emotionally ready. Now, I am and I want to take this opportunity as far as it could go. It may sound like a cliché but I do look at this new phase in my career in show business as a springboard to a place that offers more than just another occasion to take my clothes off before the camera."

True enough, despite the sad, horrid stories involving not a few of the men and women who took off their clothes before the camera, there also have been not a few who have gone beyond their bold-movie origins, notably Alma Moreno, Rio Locsin, Dina Bonnevie and Jacklyn Jose. More recently, Rosanna Roces, Assunta de Rossi and Ara Mina have gone on to win Best Actress honors.

Surely, Katya has wet her feet enough in show business to easily parlay carnal-fueled popularity to movies that would bring her into such enviable company. After all, she has chartered the extremes of the character spectrum, being contravida one moment in the long-running but now defunct Anna Karenina to essaying more accessible characters through guest appearances in various TV programs, from the comedies Kool Ka Lang and Bagong Sibol to the dramas GMA Love Stories and Larawan. Her movie credits include Honey...My Love, So Sweet, Kiss Mo ‘Ko; Laging Naroon Ka; Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon and Radyo.

"I would like to think that I’m showing a lot more than just my body in Sukdulan," says Katya. "After all my role in the movie is not that of a contravida, which maybe some people associate me with because of the scheming character I played in Anna Karenina."

Of course, Katya is well aware that comparisons pitting her against Rica and Maui would be inevitable. "I guess that comes with the territory," she says. But I can say this: I’m not competing with anybody, and I’m sure that Viva isn’t about to put down one of its stars in favor of the other. It doesn’t make for good business. Rica and Maui will have their own movie projects, and I will be given my own – and I’m determined to make the most out of each."

Very well said...

Alumni homecoming

Batch 83 of the E.A.R.I.S.T. special Science High School will have a grand alumni homecoming on Jan. 25, Saturday, 5 p.m. at the E.A.R.I.S.T. Gymnasium. Please contact Mylene Cailao-Loreto (0919-4025530, Deanne Bitang Juaniza (0920-5567599), Agnes Amorin (0919-6269699) or Teresa Huerto (0920-5357854).