It is rare for Indonesian films to make an emotionally intense charged story balanced with delicate pacing. Directed by Ravi Bharwani, the characters have multiple layers and both leads; the sexual assault victim daughter (played by Raihaanun) and helpless kickboxer father (played by Lukman Sardi) sought solace from their pent up mental upheaval in the house. May in her room and her dad in the boxing ring. May lost in her daily routine, draw herself into obsessive tidiness and order to keep her traumatized mind occupied. The scene of her familiarly rings PTSD and OCD.
In the father’s case, it is to his frustation over stagnant relationship and self-condemnation for not protecting his daughter, punching people in the ring to vent out the heavily repressed paternal nature to not trigger May’s turbulent world. It prolongs unspoken chaos that externalizes into gestures in silence, subtleties between the two; May’s undivided focus and quaint world and the father‘s attentive search of sign, progress, from May. It does not feel like watching a film and it’s a treat to experience such from Indonesian film.
Tuning into her mindscape led to a scene of the magician (which might be real, but otherwise rather surreal) who gets into her reconciling process the latter half of movie. Based on other movies I picked up, insertion of metaphorical or mindscape scene could be slippery as it easily comes off pretentious or forced. Thank god it was taken care of proportionately that it does not overpower the realistic nature of this film. The only thing that spoils is the last two minutes of the ending where the resolution went too abrupt for such intense years of stagnancy. It’s a happy ending but almost too rushed to be convincing.
The subject matter is another thing and insofar of my just-begun exposure of indie cinema concerned, has seen none that has ever artistically, brilliantly packed such difficult conversation and disturbing experience in the proper way, both sensitive and brash at the same time. It made you think, as also uttered by my mom “can it actually be that bad?” and we somewhat know it could but nobody would know exactly without first-hand experience. Even if they do, such impact couldn’t be translated the same for all, given the varied receptive nature and coping mechanism of each rape victim.
That is how this film contributes well to the conversation. It might not accurately represent all, but in some way or another, it does. What the film does is, to show in brilliantly weaved mundanity and intensity, realistically enough that it bridges closer to the victim to a point that such intensity can seem excessive.
Film is a place for drama that sometimes you don’t feel bad about what happens. It is meant for entertainment. So once slight conflict troubles you, it means you’ve been sucked into its realism. But we all know, some especially, that mind can be a chaotic place that film as a medium does not have a capacity to translate such state 100%. So if it is a question of, whether it can be that bad? Yes, it is, but though one does not go through such Isolation as May does, the chaos in mind is not to be undermined and it’s tricky because it’s difficult to explain it in moving images, in words, in whatever form outside of the mind itself. Eight years of May’s isolation is not an exaggeration to me.
It is evidence in news headlines there are suicide, homicide, other fatal impact caused by things perceptibly milder than rape. But the news is just a few words away constrained by formal tone to bridge our understanding, and the film fills it in a different way. It is fresh not in the sense that such a topic is unheard of in cinema, as we have heard impregnated stories many times in soap opera. it just simply is an art piece that could not be made any other way with a realm belong to no other than the right combination of creators.
Otherwise, it’s absolute brilliance, one has to be patient with its realistic slow pacing, which is a long to go for the majority of Indonesian audience to appreciate. Thankfully it receives warm acceptance in notorious international festivals. It’s a piece of art.
