Why Vilma deserves the Gawad Plaridel

With due respect to the State University, which is behind the Gawad Plaridel, I’d like to think that there was a strong Manunuri vote in the award UP is giving Vilma Santos because some members of the selection committee are also members of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino.

But whatever the case may be, I agree wholeheartedly with the choice of Vilma Santos as this year’s winner of the Gawad Plaridel, the University of the Philippines’ highest award for outstanding media practitioner.

This is only the second Gawad Plaridel and the award is for film. (Last year, it was newspaper publisher Eugenia Apostol who won for print.)

The awarding ceremonies – which will include a lecture on film by Vilma Santos – is on July 4 at UP’s Cine Adarna.

At this point, I would like to congratulate the good mayor of Lipa and below is a brief summary of her solid achievement in film and why I heartily applaud her having been chosen as the winner of this year’s Gawad Plaridel.

It took long for Vilma Santos to be recognized as a serious actress.

Although she won a major acting award – 1972 FAMAS Best Actress for Dama de Noche (she tied with Boots Anson-Roa) – ahead of Nora Aunor, it was the latter who first became the toast of the critics, the members of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino in particular.

Unlike Nora Aunor who only has to use her eyes to convey emotions, Vilma’s early performances were often hampered by her soft features and rather thin voice.

But through hard work and determination – plus her collaborative efforts with top directors like Ishmael Bernal, Celso Ad Castillo, Lino Brocka and later, Mike de Leon, Laurice Guillen, Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Chito Roño – she became one of the greatest actresses of Philippine cinema.

Vilma may have reached the level of superstardom on a stack of materials with the so-called "commercial appeal," but along the way, she also choose scripts that tackled social issues and oftentimes was experimental with her roles.

The other woman part she portrays in Relasyon may be sympathetic, but in our society the mistress is still the much-hated third party in the break up of most marriages. Vilma, however, risked playing that and in the process was rewarded with the first of her four sets of grand-slam win in the various local award-giving bodies. In Sister Stella L., she plays an activist nun in a picture that doesn’t allow her to have romantic scenes that are rudimentary in most movies. Sister Stella L. may have bombed at the box-office, but it is listed among the finest in the history of local films and gave Vilma the third of her eight Urian trophies.

But she was most commendable when she decided to accept the films Pahiram ng Isang Umaga and Dahil Mahal Kita (The Dolzura Cortez Story) because fans don’t want their screen idols to die in the movies.

During the past six years (when she was already the mayor of Lipa City), she already had the full luxury of accepting only the film projects she fancies.

Actually, she only made four films during this period: Bata, Bata… Paano Ka Ginawa?, Anak, Dekada ’70 and Mano Po 3: My Love. Except in Mano Po 3, where she is always fashionably dressed, she allows herself to be de-glamorized in her more recent films – at an age when most movie queens would rather be photographed through gauze or any gadget today’s modern technology could provide to erase those tell-tale wrinkles and lines.

Fortunately, she always seems to be making the right choices. Anak was the biggest box-office hit of 2000, while the three others opened to critical acclaim – with Bata, Bata Paano Ka Ginawa? and Dekada ’70 ending up as Best Picture winners in the Gawad Urian.

Vilma Santos has spent 42 years of her life in the movies – starting when she was a child star. Although she appeared in countless pictures that often stuck to formula, alongside these films that could be considered as lightweight entertainment, she also made dozens and dozens of critically-acclaimed films.

More importantly, with her talent and dedication to her craft, she delivered some of the most sterling performances ever recorded in Philippine cinema.