Berlin Review: Kamila Andini’s ‘Before, Now & Then’
12.02.2022 - 20:21
/ deadline.com
“Why do women wear their hair long?,” asks the irrepressible Dais of her mother Nana as she sits in front of the mirror, dressing her hair as if there were nothing more important in life.
To all appearances, life moves slowly in 1960s West Java. Dais wants to have her hair short like Daddy’s, so she doesn’t have to spend so much time in the shower. And why, she goes on, do you wear it in a bun? “A woman must be good at keeping secrets,” replies Nana (Happy Salma) fondly. “What happens in her household is under her bun.”
There is enough unspoken tragedy in Nana’s life to clog a dozen hairbrushes, some of which we have already seen; things here haven’t always moved at the pace of a painting.
The opening scene of Kamila Andini’s Berlin Film Festival competition entry Before, Now & Then (aka Nana) shows two women carrying their goods — including a baby — through the forest on animal tracks to avoid being spotted by “those people.” Nana is being spirited away by her sister, under instructions from their father. The rebels want Nana as a consort for their leader. If not her, then her sister will do.
Even in the jungle, the women whisper. There is nobody around, but their reality is porous; sitting under a tree eating lunch, it is as if Nana can already see a group of zealots closing in on her father with machetes to chop off his head. At another moment, her missing husband appears between the trees. In an immediate sense, they are not there. In another — a sixth sense, maybe a seventh — they are. Whispering is always best.
Nana is still whispering 13 years later, now remarried to a wealthy landowner and with several more children. Her husband Mr Darga (Arswendy Bening Swara) is older than she is. We first see her combing his
The website popstar.one is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.