Judy Ann Santos and child actor Cedric Amit in a scene from Ploning.

While I am not a big follower of the career of Judy Ann Santos, her recent film Ploning piqued my interest way before its release. Everything about Ploning was promising—from the idea of combining indie filmmaking sensibility with the business mindset of commercial production, to its raw, stirring stills—a very small project with high hopes.

Shot in Cuyo, Palawan, Ploning is the story of a small-town spinster (Judy Ann as Ploning) seemingly waiting for a lost love, who had left town almost 15 years before. Ploning is supposed to be this mysterious character who is everything to everyone in town—she checks on everyone: her beau’s mother (Gina Pareno); the six-year-old Digo with the bedridden mother; even the heartbroken boy whose love has gone on to marry someone else. If there’s anybody in this town who’s spreading herself too thin, it’s Ploning. Juday, at best, doesn’t even come as close to mysterious as Malena—her character was too selfless and giving to even be intriguing.

Press releases we’ve skimmed through said 60 percent of Ploning was in the Cuyunon language, and while I do not know any Cuyunon, I thought it strange how every now and then, one of the characters would lapse into this pidgin Cuyunon-Tagalog dialect. We don’t know how authentic their use of the language was, but if you take this film abroad with subtitles, it will hopefully pass muster.

A scene from Ploning: (L-R) Ces Quesada, Mylene Dizon, Judy Ann Santos, and Merylle Soriano.

Ploning is told in the point-of-view of a grown-up Digo, and many scenes shift from the present to the past, some of which didn’t happen seamlessly. Also, Tessie Tomas in her usual vivacious self seemed too bubbly to be an older version of Mylene Dizon, who plays the nurse Celeste.

What we loved about the film, however, was it tried to break new grounds in terms of storyline, and that’s hard to do, especially with the Pinoy audience used to love teams. Ploning faced stiff competition in the Star Cinema starrer When Love Begins (featuring Aga Muhlach and Anne Curtis), which opened on the same date. However, Ploning proved that you don’t need a love interest to make a story successful. Besides, we’ve seen too much of beaches and bikinis in Pinoy films to even be curious about this recent Aga flick (which, in all fairness, I tried to sit through for a little more than an hour—but clichés like “What happens in Boracay stays in Boracay” can be really annoying, don’t you think?).

Overall, Ploning is worth watching, considering this is a directorial debut for Dante Nico Garcia. The movie is showing in more theaters now and will also be going global this month. There’s also a companion coffee-table book with it (at P1,900—and we hold judgment of Ryan Agoncillo’s photography until we get a peek of the photos). Years from now, we’re certain Juday would look back at her 30^th year and be proud of Ploning.

Related Ploning stories:
Coffee-table Book on Ploning Launched
Discovering Cuyo, Palawan
Judy Ann Santos and Friends Go All Out for Ploning
Juday to Star in Panoramanila’s First Film
Ploning Opens This Month