Yuni
Different, different, but same
Yuni (2021) begins somberly on a rainy day in Indonesia as a girl is getting ready for school, where she will learn that mandatory virginity tests will be starting soon due to the nationwide steep rise in “extramarital” teen pregnancies. Her busy morning continues when she gets called to the office and chided for stealing another student’s purple headband (Yuni loves purple), and finally, she learns that the school is shutting down the music program because it’s “aurat.” (I had to look it up: in Indonesian, this is the most apt translation: feminine, resembling intimate parts.)
Finally, after an intense morning that is seemingly taken in stride by the student body, Yuni has a chance to goof off with her friends. Where does this take place: in the ruin of a building several hundred yards from the school. The falling apart, unused building they play in feels like a monument to a previous but defeated era. Only when men abandon a place can these women enjoy it, and this won’t be the last time in the film that female joy is depicted as being made possible by a complete lack of societal intrusion in the form of a decrepit unused building.
Yuni tells the story of a young girl living in the patriarchal society of contemporary Indonesia: older men come by her family’s house to propose to her and offer money to her family, as a dowry, in exchange for her hand in marriage. Assuming she’s a virgin, of course. Yuni is a beautiful young girl and has no trouble attracting suitors, many of whom she’d rather not attract, but she has a lot of trouble being taken seriously by the people in her life as someone who can manage her own affairs. Even the men she has an affinity for don’t seem to know what to do with her confident and straightforward nature. Teachers think she’s too logical. Family thinks she’s too demanding. (There were strong shades of Peter Bogdonavich’s Daisy Miller (1974) at play here.) This brings me to the most impressive aspect of the film: Arawinda Kirana’s performance as the eponymous main character was flawless: The range of naturalism she brings to the role, such a young character at that, is incredibly solid. Yuni feels fully realized: apathetic, curious, repelled, bored, excited, despairing, horny while sad, horny while happy, and many other emotions that run the gamut of the human experience: Kirana can do it all. I won’t be surprised at all to see Kirana rise to international stardom over the next few years, and no small of credit for this belongs to her director Kamila Andini as well.
Indonesian Movies are having a bit of a moment. The current boom in the Indonesian film industry is represented by a remarkable increase in both production and viewership, propelled by the surge in popularity of over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms. (Like Netflix, Hulu, or anything that comes straight out of the internet.) The Indonesian film industry has seen successes in different genres, such as the drama Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (2017) and the horror movie Pengabdi Setan (Satan's Slaves, 2017), or my personal favorite, the action revenge series The Raid (2011-2014), all of which have garnered critical acclaim and international recognition. The expansion of global streaming services has played a crucial role in this boom, enabling Indonesian films to reach audiences far beyond their borders and cementing the country's position on the international cinematic map.
I was so gobsmacked with how good Yuni is that I wondered if it had garnered any Oscar buzz back in 2021 when it was released. (Not that Oscars are a good measure of a film’s worth.) I found the list of all films submitted for consideration in the 94th Acadamy Awards, and I realized that for a category that comes and goes with little fanfare every year, there’s an Olympian level of screening and selection. While Yuni was Indonesia’s submission to the academy (each non-US country gets one submission in this category), it wasn’t even short-listed! Did I just stumble onto the best watch list of all time: the annual list of submissions by countries for Oscar consideration?
If Yuni didn’t make it, how good might the rest be!? My guess is that one of Yuni’s greatest strengths was its Oscars weakness: American audiences like to know what kind of movie they’re going to watch before they start. Take a look at the header image along with these images from Yuni, including the poster, and tell me what kind of movie it is:
Whatever you might guess, you’re probably somewhat right and somewhat wrong. One of the most refreshing aspects and greatest strengths of Yuni is it doesn’t feel trapped on a single tone in the way Western films tend to be.
To say more about the plot of Yuni would be to deny you the rare joy of watching an international indie film that opens your eyes to a part of the world previously unknown but in a way that makes you feel like you’re inhabiting the space along the characters. Every film has a message, but some of the best films manage to couch their message in a perfect juxtaposition of scenes. A series of images and sounds that make an audience feel like they’re the ones connecting the dots, uncovering the insanity in this world. That Yuni is only 95 minutes long makes its greatness even more shocking. I thought of Yuni for days after seeing it: how great it was to so easily watch this Indonesian gem, and how sad it was for what it teaches us about the world, and how far we still have to go.
Yuni
Written by Prima Rusdi and Kamila Andini; Directed by Kamila Andini
2021
95 minutes
Indonesian
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Hoopla (free streaming service: all you need is a library card.)
You’ll like this if you like: Daisy Miller (1974), Girlhood (2014), or Moonlight (2016)