Day of the Jaclyn

A week after Jaclyn Jose made history as the first Filipino to win the best actress award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, many Filipinos are still gushing over her triumph and how much it means to the Philippines. She certainly deserves the adulation. 

Jose’s unexpected and emotional win—for longtime friend Brillante Mendoza’s newest drama Ma’ Rosa, in which she portrays a sari-sari store owner and part-time drug pusher who, with her husband, is nabbed by money-extorting policemen—at one of the top three film festivals in the world is, without question, the most high-profile yet by a Filipino performer or filmmaker.

It’s more celebrated than the best director prize Mendoza received for Kinatay at Cannes in 2009 and the Palme d’Or for short films that independent-film pioneer Raymond Red garnered for his nine-minute Anino at the same festival in 2000, and even the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize awarded to Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis director Lav Diaz at the Berlin Film Festival in February.

It surpassed the victories of other Filipino actors at other festivals and award shows in recent years. These include the wins of film icons Nora Aunor and Eddie Garcia for their lead performances in Thy Womb and Bwakaw, respectively, at the 2013 Asian Film Awards; and of Eugene Domingo for her starring role in Barber’s Tales at the 2013 Tokyo International Film Festival.

The ecstatic response to Jose’s triumph, particularly from members and admirers of the Filipino film community, can be attributed to a few things. There’s Cannes, for one. Despite the flak it has received over some of the movies it included in its official-selection lineup—too white, too dominated by men, too Eurocentric, etc.—and bestowed prizes on (2006 Palme d’Or winner The Wind That Shakes the Barley, anyone?) through the years, it still enjoys a wonderful reputation for introducing truly great films to moviegoers and, more important, Hollywood’s attention.

There’s also the fact that Jose defeated unusually stiff competition—two Academy Award winners (From the Land of the Moon’s Marion Cotillard and The Last Face’s Charlize Theron), a two-time winner at the festival (Elle’s Isabelle Huppert), and an Ethiopian-Irish actress earning serious Oscar buzz (Loving’s Ruth Negga), among others—to clinch the best actress prize. Jose herself admitted after winning that she thought she had no chance of beating any of them. Obviously, the Cannes official-selection jury, led by Mad Max: Fury Road filmmaker George Miller, thought otherwise and defended its choice.

And then there’s Jose herself. Ever since she emerged in the mid-1980s in films like White Slavery, Private Show, Itanong Mo sa Buwan and Takaw Tukso, Jose has made a name for herself as an uncommonly gifted and fearless performer.

From The Flor Contemplacion Story and Mulanay to Tuhog and Sarong Banggi, she has impressed discerning audiences with a restrained and unaffected acting style that’s so distinctive, it has been parodied a few times. Even in roles and projects that have been dismissed, fairly or unfairly, as unworthy of her talents, Jose still managed to make the most out of them.

Thanks to her victory, Ma’ Rosa is expected to be shown in commercial theaters sooner than later. During a post-awards media conference at Cannes last Monday (Manila time), Jose herself said her win may get more Filipinos interested to watch the social-realist film. She hoped that they would not only see her performance in it, but also themselves.

For their sake, I hope so, too.

That, I think, is one thing that makes Jose such a terrific actress. As far as she’s concerned, the star is never the “star.” It’s not about her at all; it’s the film(s) she’s in. The star(s) always serves the story, not the other way around—or, at least, it should be. And it takes someone of her caliber to drive that point home. Is it any wonder, then, that she has endured in the local film industry?

For that, and for all the performances she delivered through the years, Jose deserves every praise she gets.