Tag: Marthino Lio

Janur Ireng (Janur Ireng: Sewu Dino the Prequel, Kimo Stamboel, 2025)

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If something seems to good to be true, it probably is. Sabdo (Marthino Lio) and his sister Intan (Nyimas Ratu Rafa) might be too young to know any better, but even they have their doubts when a mysterious man shows up after their house has burnt down claiming to be an estranged uncle. Their late father never mentioned having a brother or any family at all and did not ask for him when he was dying. As the siblings will discover, there’s a reason for that and they may not want this particular familial legacy no matter the trappings it comes with. 

A prequel to his previous film A Thousand Days (Sewu Dino), Kimo Stamboel’s Janur Ireng is partly a metaphor for the exploitative practices of the super rich who use their wealth to manipulate or abuse those with lesser means. Having grown up without much money and fallen into poverty after their father died to the extent that Intan had had to leave education, being suddenly adopted by their wealthy uncle plunges the pair into a new world they are not altogether equipped to understand even without all the weird black magic rituals and sense of unease pervading the country mansion. Intan complains that the house has creepy vibes, and there is something gothic about it aside from feeling lost amid its vastness. Intan dislikes sleeping alone because her new room is simply far too big, even it didn’t turn out to come with some unexpected residents. It’s wandering around the house that she discovers something shocking, unsure if it’s something she wasn’t supposed to see or if she was guided there by a mysterious force.

Sabdo, meanwhile, is taken on as his uncle’s heir and protege. He discovers that Arjo (Tora Sudiro) is trying to regain land lost to the family including a banana plantation he days will be his to run, though Arjo seems pretty wealthy already. He is, though, on frosty terms the “7 Families” who run things in the local area and appears to want to reassert his status. With little in the way of explanation, he gets Sabdo to repeatedly sacrifice goats and do other strange things “to protect the family”, which Sabdo goes along with because he doesn’t quite know how to refuse and is confused by this strange new life. But on the other hand, Sabdo is a stranger here. He’s only told that he’s a member of the family and has no other connection with it or proof that it’s true. His loyalty really is to Intan, and it may be that he stays and does these increasingly weird rituals because Arjo promised Intan what he couldn’t give her in sending her to school and allowing her to fulfil her dream of going to university and getting a good job. A friend had needled her a little bit about ending up like another girl who married young, laying bare the patriarchal nature of the society in which Intan is imprisoned even before finding herself more literally locked up in her uncle’s house. 

Even if Sabdo thinks he finds allies in this world, they too may be using him for their own ends and wielding the power of family against him. Arjo claims their success is down to the patronage of a demonic entity that keeps them safe from other supernatural creatures which what has made their family so wealthy and powerful, but there are reasons their father decided to leave this place even If it meant giving up on the privilege he was born with. There is definitely “a lot wrong with this house” as Sabdo says, though he only makes up his mind to leave it when he realises the threat it poses to Intan. She, however, has already been corrupted by the house as its ghosts and malevolent entities begin to get to her. Kimo Stamboel ups the ante with a series of increasingly bizarre sequences of severed eye balls and torn out hearts, culminating in another kind of ritual disrupted by a once in a generation act of black magic that sees party guests literally tearing their own heads off and continuing to dance. That does not, however, seem to be the end of it for Sabdo whose dark family legacy continues to overshadow his life in ironic ways as he does his best to escape the house his uncle built.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas, Edwin, 2021)

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The innocent love of a pair of traumatised youngsters is crushed by the society in which they live in Edwin’s ‘80s-set pulp adventure, Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas). An absurdist parable about the corrosive effects of toxic masculinity and its links to oppressive authoritarianism, Edwin’s outlandish drama sees a young man contend with literal and societal impotence through the medium of violence while falling in love with a woman equally in desire of revenge against her misuses at the hands of a misogynistic society. 

Rendered sexually impotent after childhood trauma, 20-something Ajo (Marthino Lio) gets his release through violence well known for always being up for a fight whether there’s money involved or not. Yet as we see he seems to enjoy being on the receiving end, almost giggling when he’s set upon by a small mob in a bar. During the course of one particular job with a social justice angle roughing up an overreaching local businessman who apparently pressed a man into debt in order to extract the payment from his wife, Ajo ends up running into Iteung (Ladya Cheryl), his target’s bodyguard and a lover of violence like himself. The pair fall in love, but Ajo is afraid to pursue a relationship because of his impotence eventually provoked into a rain-soaked confession only to realise that just like everyone else in town Iteung already knows and doesn’t care. She marries him anyway but is continually stalked by a resentful ex, Budi (Reza Rahadian), while Ajo is preoccupied with a job he unwisely took on to knock off a gangster rival of former general Uncle Gembul (Piet Pagau).

The pair are in a sense pursued by their pasts each of which stems back to an instance of sexual abuse, the young Ajo forced to participate in a rape after being kidnapped by a pair of corrupt soldiers and thereafter rendered impotent. In an ironic touch, the assault takes place on the day of an eclipse which president Suharto had issued advice not to look at owing to the possibility of damaging one’s sight though in essence Ajo gets in trouble for looking directly at something he should not have seen and is rendered impotent by corrupt state power. Years later, Iteung decides she wants revenge, that if she could track down and enact justice on these two former soldiers she might be able to lift Ajo’s curse and ironically enough restore his manhood so that they might have a full marriage. 

She meanwhile is also carrying her own trauma having been subject to male sexualised violence from a young age. Given Ajo’s condition, the pair consummate their relationship through pugilism, a fight scene standing in for sex but the disruptive presence of the brooding Budi continues to linger on the horizon Iteung coming to regret a bargain she made with him in the hope of tracking down the soldiers. Having quelled his lust for violence, discovering that Iteung has betrayed him sends Ajo into a murderous rage finally completing the job he had been afraid of doing in fear that it would pollute his otherwise blissful relationship with his new wife. In an ironic touch, Budi’s big business plan is selling a snake oil male virility tonic, his insecure yet superficially powerful vision of masculinity held up as an ideal while Ajo once again attempts to validate his manhood through violence. After a period of wandering and an encounter with a mysterious figure he begins to rediscover a sense of security in masculinity that is not linked with sexuality realising that all he wants is to be with Iteung and he no longer cares whether or not his impotence is ever cured. 

A retro homage to the action exploitation movies of the 1980s, Edwin’s absurdist world building is a direct attack on a macho culture that manifests itself in oppressive authoritarianism along with the concurrent misogyny that leaves women vulnerable to male violence. At heart a romance in which love ultimately triumphs over the corrosive effects of toxic masculinity and entrenched patriarchy, Edwin’s absurdist tale later takes a turn for the metaphysical in the form of the arrival of a ghostly avenger come to enact justice on those who presumed themselves above the law but nevertheless ends on a note of cosmic irony in which the wages of vengeance must indeed be paid in full.

Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash screens in New York March 19 with lead actress Ladya Cheryl appearing in person as part of Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look 2022. Due to popular demand, a second screening without guest appearance has now been added on March 26.

International trailer (English subtitles)