Reviews
Ada Apa dengan Cinta? (2002)
A Hollywood-style teen movie from Indonesia
WARNING - SPOILERS BELOW!
Cinta (whose name means "love") is a girl at high school in the wealthy Jakarta suburb of Swirijaya Golf. She and her four girlfriends Maura, Alia, Karmen and Milly do everything together, both socially and at school. Cinta has a boyfriend, Borne, but has no real feelings for him. Cinta also writes poetry, and the other four girls are sure she will win the school poetry competition. But the prize goes instead to a moody loner, Rangga. Partly out of jealousy, Cinta decides to interview him for the school paper, but Rangga wants no part of it. He didn't even enter the competition it was his only friend, the school caretaker Mr Wardiman, who entered one of Rangga's poems on his behalf. Though neither Cinta nor Rangga wants to admit it, they click. Cinta begins to turn up late, or not at all, for dates with her girlfriends. Without telling them, she is seeing Rangga. Their first date ends badly when they argue and she storms out of a second-hand book dealer's, where they have gone on the pretext of tracking down an out-of-print novel. Borne gets to hear about it and brings some of his friends to confront Rangga. They beat him up, but this only brings Cinta and Rangga back together. Cinta gets a glimpse outside her privileged world when she meets Yusrizal, Rangga's father, who is an academic. For exposing government corruption in 1996, he was fired and persecuted, and even deserted by his wife and all his children except for Rangga. Cinta is just asking him "But hasn't there been reform now?" when thugs on motorbikes toss firebombs through the window. Yusrizal puts out the fires as if it's an everyday occurrence and Rangga tell Cinta that it's no use making a complaint because "no action will be taken." Later Cinta accepts Rangga's invitation to the Blues Cafe, where Rangga's cousin Rama is a singer. Rama invites her to perform and she recites Rangga's winning poem. But when she gets home, her parents are on their way to hospital. Cinta's friend Alia has attempted suicide after suffering years of violence at the hands of her father. Cinta blames herself because she had chosen to go out with Rangga instead of seeing Alia. The other girls turn on her, and she turns on Rangga. But Alia recovers and the girls see their mistake. They realise that Cinta loves Rangga, and urge her to make it up with him. Then they hear from Mr Wardiman that Rangga is leaving to study in New York. The girls commandeer the car of the school nerd, Mamet, and rush to the airport, where Cinta and Rangga are reconciled. He still has to go to New York, but he leaves her his book of poems, in which he promises to come back to her.
Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)
A prophetic exposé of the Nazi threat to democracy
Warning: spoilers below!
"Confessions of a Nazi Spy" opens with three seemingly unconnected sequences: an announcer reporting the recent conviction of members of a Nazi spy ring in America; a postal delivery to a woman called Mary McLaughlin in Scotland; and a Hitler-style address by a Dr Kassel to a rally held by a German-American organisation known as the Bund. The common link between the three sequences is a network of Nazi espionage and subversion centred on Franz Schlager, an officer on a German passenger liner, the SS Bismarck, which makes regular trips to New York. On the voyage from Germany, the Bismarck brings Nazi propaganda material for distribution by Kassel's organisation, and on the homeward run she takes US military plans and other classified information obtained by Schlager's agents. Schlager is also the ship's political leader. As such he is able to lord it over everyone, even the captain, and he warns the crew that they will not escape the `protecting eye' of their government even when they are on American soil - a veiled reference to the Gestapo, whose agents are seen keeping tabs on Germans in America. One of Schlager's recruits is a man called Kurt Schneider, who fancies himself as a spy. Initially Schneider has some success, partly because American security is wide open. He recruits a former army colleague, the simple-minded Werner, who is now a private in Army Air Corps. But he comes undone when he goes over Schlager's head and writes (via Mary McLaughlin) to Berlin, proposing the kidnapping of an American colonel. Tipped off by the postman, who has become suspicious of McLaughlin's frequent letters from abroad, British Military Intelligence arrests McLaughlin and tips off the FBI about Schneider. FBI agent Edward Renard, who has so far specialised in combating gangsters, now turns to counter-espionage and makes a clean sweep of the spy ring, including Kassel. When Kassel is released on bail, he gets a taste of his own medicine: he is kidnapped by the Gestapo and sent back to Germany, as others have been before him. As the remaining spies are convicted, spinning newspaper headlines report how the `fifth column' (pro-Nazi Germans) have used subversion and sabotage to pave the way for Hitler's conquest of Western Europe. Following the trial, a conversation between Renard and the attorney who prosecuted the case serves as a warning to Americans not to take their liberty, or their security, for granted.
Joki (2001)
A moving slice of small-town life in central Finland
Set on a Saturday morning, "The River" tells six stories that take place during a sonic boom that changes lives forever. The film opens and closes with one of the stories as two boys try to save Anni, a single mother who wants to drown herself and her baby in the local river. The other episodes include the story of the chronically broke Esa, an unsuccessful musician who comes to his father's 60th birthday party with the intention of replenishing his ailing finances. Then there's the exuberant pizza waitress Leena, who is walking on air because she is in love and wants to matchmake her workmates to spread her happiness. Ilpo feels sick and reluctantly goes home early from work to discover that his wife is having an affair. An old couple are having their last moments together, with the husband in hospital with no hope of recovery. They battle bureaucracy to get the hospital to let him go home to die with dignity. Santeri, a Year 12 student, is on his way to see a girl he loves - but he has to sort out similar feelings he has for a male friend. Finally, a young girl falls in love for the first time in her life. We meet these people as they are confronted by great sorrow, unexpected happiness, difficult decisions, the end of a marriage, and matters of life and death.
Säädyllinen murhenäytelmä (1998)
A family crisis spanning the last two summers before World War II
In 1938, the threat of war appears to have receded, but another danger looms for Tauno and Elisabet, an upper middle-class Helsinki couple with an outwardly happy and secure marriage. With the summer coming on, Tauno falls prey to a rising tide of erotic obsession. At the family's holiday home, he is smitten by the virginal beauty of the neighbours' nanny, and pens no less than 60 pages full of decadent yearnings, which his conscience then forces him to hand over to his wife. Initially horrified, Elisabet returns to Helsinki to seek the advice of Tauno's sister Naimi, herself the victim of an unfaithful, sadistic husband. The women decide that since Tauno's writings are just that - a `literary product' without any `deed' as such - Elisabet should forgive him. But Tauno, in the meantime, has moved on from words to action, and has seduced the young girl. When she falls pregnant, his conscience again forces him to confess to Elisabet, who is adamant in her refusal to accept any apology. Naimi's attempts to effect a reconciliation with her ex-husband Artur also fail, undermined by his cruelty towards her and an insanely domineering mother-in-law. Tauno's sense of guilt leads him to provide the young mother-to-be with some money, but when she dies in childbirth the following April, it is Elisabet who steps in to take on the family responsibility of caring for the baby. The comfort she derives from this appears to restore some equilibrium to her marriage. But by now it is the summer of 1939, and war is only weeks away.