Tag: Banyu Bening

The Period of Her (Erlina Rakhmawati, Yulinda Andriyani, Praditha Blifa, Sarah Adilah, 2025)

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Four emerging female filmmakers explore the experiences of women in contemporary Indonesia in anthology film The Period of Her. Though in different styles and approaching the issues from different angles, each of the segments highlights the ways in which women suffer disproportionately due to double standards in a fiercely patriarchal culture, from being prevented from following their dreams to being trapped at home by an abusive partner expecting total obedience from his wife.

Perhaps the clearest indication of this is that the women are expected to scrub their sanitary pads to remove “dirty” blood even though they are disposable and will just be thrown away. Women are often seen trying to wash blood stains out of their clothes and towels as if expected to hide the evidence of their womanhood. Nisa gets her period during swimming training and is immediately forced to reckon with her sudden entrance into adulthood. Though she enjoyed swimming and was good at it, now that she is a woman it is no longer permitted. They tell her that she’s polluting the water, while it’s now improper for her to wear “revealing” swimming costumes. At first, she tried to keep it a secret from her school friends, but once they find out she has to dress differently, marking her out as an “adult”, though she is clearly still a child no different from the other girls. Though her male teammate doesn’t agree with the way she’s being treated and just wants to swim with her again, he is eventually picked to represent the school while Nisa is forced to retire. She takes a used, unscrubbed, sanitary towel and smears blood over the display cabinet featuring all her trophies and certificates for which the school has taken all the credit.

Nisa’s mother had also wanted to pursue her dream of swimming, but was pulled into an early marriage meaning she had to give it up which isn’t what she wants for Nisa. But motherhood is it seems the only role for a woman. Wati also turns down her husband’s sexual advances because of her menstrual cramps, but he too becomes angry and is apparently fed up with her inability to conceive a child after five years of marriage. He says this is the reason that he married her, but, at the same time, refuses to be examined by a doctor unwilling to consider that the issue may lie with him. His family have called her a failure as a wife, while Watik complains that she’s struggled for five years trying to prove her husband’s manhood. When she comes across an abandoned baby, it seems like all her problems are solved, though her husband is unhappy complaining that he wanted her to have his child, not raise someone else’s, and then bizarrely taking them both to a brothel in search of help.

Rendi, a cheating boyfriend, similarly says he can do what he likes and smirks that his girlfriend, Shela, wasn’t a virgin anyway so he doesn’t owe her anything even if they slept together. The girl she caught him with, Desi, tells her that Rendi said he was bored with her, though he’s evidently made no attempt to end the relationship or treat Shela as anything other than object. She can’t really challenge him, but becomes so enraged during the traditional dance she’s performing that the MC has to stop it for her safety. Nevertheless, she pretends to be possessed by a spirit to call Rendi out, seeing as he’s at the festival in the guise of a “virgin shaman”. Despite the animosity that might exist between them, the episode ends on a note of female solidarity as Shela and Desi share a drink on the way home, laughing together as they ride away on their motorbikes.

An inversion of this female solidarity can be seen in the final segment, Not Dead Enough, in which an overbearing husband drops dead of a heart attack after picking up a machete to attack his previously meek wife who has been pushed to breaking point by his uselessness. On waking up, he discovers himself in a world in which gender roles have been completely reversed. He is now bullied by his domineering wife and a host of female debt collectors, not to mention casually sexually harassed even though he’s not really allowed to go out of his house. He has only the solidarity of the other husbands who try to help and take care of him. In place of hijabs, they wear bicycle helmets on their heads, and are expected to serve their wives with absolute obedience. Experiencing period pain for the first time along with the threat of violence from his wife and other women, Kempas gets a taste of his own medicine and realises what it’s like to live as a woman in this society, though he never really gets the opportunity to put what he’s learned into practice and be a better man and husband. Each of the women is, in their own way, trapped by the patriarchal order and struggling to find a way to live while looked down on and dismissed by men who think it’s their birthright to be served and take each refusal as an assault on their manhood.

The Period of Her screens in Amsterdam 9th/10th April as part of this year’s CinemAsia Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Legend of Gatotkaca (Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca, Hanung Bramantyo, 2022)

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Indonesia has quietly been building its very own superhero cinematic universes over the past few years with Joko Anwar’s Gundala almost certainly the best known internationally. The Legend of Gatotkaca (Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca) is similarly intended to be the first in a new franchise, Satria Dewa, which draws influence from Indian mythology and is set in a dualistic world centuries after a battle between good and evil was ended by the gods to stop evil winning. 

Essentially an origin story for the titular hero Gatotkaca, the film follows down on his luck photographer Yuda (Rizky Nazar) who had to drop out of university because he is poor and also responsible for taking care of his mother who is suffering with memory loss and mental illness following an incident 15 years previously in which the pair were attacked by a mysterious figure in black who could shoot lasers from his fingers. Yuda assumes his memories from back then must have been a dream and that his mother’s mental distress has more to do with his father, Pande (Cecep Arif Rahman), abandoning the family. Nevertheless, he is soon dragged into intrigue when his best friend Erlangga (Jerome Kurnia) is murdered in the same way his mother was attacked during his university graduation ceremony. Determined to figure out the truth, Yuda and professor’s daughter Agni (Yasmin Napper) find their way to a secret organisation Erlangga had been a part of which aims to save the world from destructive forces carrying the Kaurava gene. 

In the film’s dualistic world view, there was once a civil war between those carrying the Pandava gene which encourages good, humanistic qualities and the Kaurava whose impulses are dark and destructive. But then as Professor Arya (Edward Akbar) who studies such things points out, Pandava can also be destructive while Kaurava are capable of using their “destructive” qualities for good. Even so, most of the bad things that have happened in the world particularly in the last 15 years since a mysterious meteorite fell to earth, can be attributed to the rising Kaurava influence from political corruption to illegal logging and even the COVID-19 pandemic. Someone is bumping off Pandava in an effort to release evil Kaurava general Aswatama (Fedi Nuril) from his imprisonment within a giant gemstone which explains the “mysterious” deaths of talented people like Olympic sportmsmen and a doctor who discovered a COVID-19 vaccine. 

Of course, Yuda turns out to be a chosen one and must pursue his destiny as the defender of the Pandava before assuming his rightful role as Gatotkaca. Only by confronting his immediate family history can he make himself whole and gain the strength to defeat Aswatama, saving the world from chaos. Meanwhile he has to contend with a romantic subplot in which Agni is aggressively courted by the odious and entitled Nathan (Axel Matthew Thomas) and his father who have at least strong Kaurava energy aside from being embodiments of oppressive elitism looking down on Yuda simply because he is poor. The underground cell Yuda eventually comes into contact with are also in their way a resistance to this same elitism, though unusually well equipped in their incredibly expensive-looking lair filled with the latest technology and looked after by a kindly Indian granny who is herself a Karauna but uses her powers, and at one point a good old-fashioned shot gun, for good.

It’s this duality to which the film eventually returns as Yuda declares they must be the light in the darkness and the darkness in the light as they secretly wage a war against an ancient evil apparently already well established in the contemporary social order. This being the first instalment in what seems to be cued up as a burgeoning franchise, there is undoubtedly a lot to take in from the talk of heirlooms and amulets to holy water and ancient weapons though the film does boast some excellent production design even if the centralisation of genetics as an indicator of good and evil is equally uncomfortable. Nevertheless, it’s a promising start to the cycle with a series of exciting action set pieces showcasing the art of silat along with some impressive CGI in the Star Wars-esque laser warfare even if it’s clear Gatotkaca’s toughest battles are yet to come.

Legend of Gatotkaca streams in the US via Hi-YAH! from 17th February and will be released on Digital, blu-ray, and DVD on March 21 courtesy of Well Go USA.

International trailer (English subtitles)