I have just watched the film Retroverso.
Five directors each take a story by the Queen of Sastra Wangi, Dee Lestari, and these are woven almost seamlessly into one film.
Sastra Wangi (Fragrent Literature) has something of the dismissive tone of Chick Lit, and some of Indonesia's best women writers are lumped in with the simple mass market teen and twenties romances.
Dee Lestari is somewhere in between. She is a good writer but a little too sentimental for me. I perfer the rawer style of Djenar Maesa Ayu, whose early stories I thought very good indeed.
Although Retroverso's five stories of unrequited love are unashamedly sentimental tearjerkers, they are well told and very cleverly edited into one film.
Apart from the last Joko Anwar I have not seen any good new Indonesian films for a year or two, so I was pleased to see a new generation of talent coming through.
Finally Joko Anwar does some of the best horror and mystery films around, but he can do sentimental too. So here is a Joko Anwar short film.
Dee Lestari is somewhere in between. She is a good writer but a little too sentimental for me. I perfer the rawer style of Djenar Maesa Ayu, whose early stories I thought very good indeed.
Although Retroverso's five stories of unrequited love are unashamedly sentimental tearjerkers, they are well told and very cleverly edited into one film.
Apart from the last Joko Anwar I have not seen any good new Indonesian films for a year or two, so I was pleased to see a new generation of talent coming through.
It is interesting to watch films from a different culture, the narrative almost becomes of secondary importance to all the background detail. There were too many examples of this in Retroverso, but I will mention one thing that struck me. There seemed to be two Indonesias, interior and exterior.
Indoors might well be somewhere in Europe or America, but outdoors could be nowhere but Indonesia. In a way this is to be expected as the characters are largely educated middle class. Nevertheless I found it an interesting dichotomy.
I won't bore you any more, just recommend the film to anyone interested in Indonesian cinema and give you a link to the review in the Jakarta Post
Finally Joko Anwar does some of the best horror and mystery films around, but he can do sentimental too. So here is a Joko Anwar short film.
Cute kids! Awwwwwwwwww! Cantik ya!