Incredibly prolific at the age of 37, Indonesian director Kamila Andini has crafted one of the better coming-of-age films of the past few years with her third feature, Yuni. It’s a very culturally-specific slice of Indonesian Muslim life revolving around the world of its 16-year-old title character, played with tenacious grace by Arawinda Kirana. The film is not so much about Yuni achieving some specific goal, but rather, it dials itself in quite intimately on her yearning for self-actualization. As executed by Andini and Kirana, this yearning has a palpable immediacy and a special kind of haunting quality.
Yuni is just starting to see the possibilities the world outside her small town may offer. She is torn between considering scholarship opportunities and accepting marriage proposals from local men in this highly patriarchal community. The film is essentially structured around rejected marriage proposals, all of which propel moments of deeper self-discovery in conversation among her and her similarly-positioned friends. Classmate Yoga (Kevin Ardilova) is smitten with Yuni, but is painfully awkward. Meanwhile, one of her teachers, Pak (Sir) Damar (Dimas Aditya) is the object of her desires, though she obviously dare not act on them. He gives her an assignment in literature and poetry, her only less-than-stellar subjects. Yoga agrees to do the assignment for her, establishing a connection between them whereby Yoga becomes one of the few male figures in Yuni’s life that isn’t some kind of threat to her selfhood.
That sense of threat is ever-present in the way the film is shot by Teoh Gay Hian. Out-of-focus male characters often fill the negative space in several sequences, culminating in a beautiful piece of direction by Andini which sees Yuni and Yoga following each other quietly, but definitely not casually. I don’t want to make it seem like this is all a dour exercise, especially since Kirana’s performance is so full of life and Yuni’s friend group are often delightful in a look-what-we-used-to-believe-as-kids kind of way, even with the cultural differences. However, that sense of being on a dangerous and nearing precipice — of stepping from childhood to adulthood, and specifically girlhood to womanhood — informs the entire tone of the film, and it’s what makes it so memorable as a challenging work of international cinema.
The film moves fluidly as well, as if informed by Kirana’s poise. Edited by veteran Thai editor Lee Chatametikool (who has edited many of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films along with one of my favorite films of last year, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), Yuni incorporates its various statements about life under this sort of patriarchy adroitly and non-didactically. It is by no means apolitical, but it’s a drama first and foremost. Some films have a way of making sure you’re paying attention with certain plot developments, and your reaction can tell you a lot about how deeply invested you are in the characters. The final act of Yuni had me yelling at certain characters on Yuni’s behalf. That’s when I knew the movie had captivated me.
I believe the hardest thing to get across consistently and credibly in any film is theme. I say this because I’ve seen many young directors try and fail to blend story with theme and give both equal weight. Although the theme here stems directly from the story, and so the task is somewhat less difficult than in other cases, Kamila Andini proves a mastery of this skill with Yuni. Now that she’s on my radar with the American video-on-demand release of this film, I can’t wait to catch up with some of her other work, and I look forward to seeing what she achieves in the future. Voices like hers are valuable and vital to film culture as a whole. | George Napper
Yuni is now available on many video-on-demand platforms
In Indonesian and Serang-Javanese with English subtitles
