Four Seasons in Java (Kamila Andini, 2026)
A real stinker.
In its defence, it does start out strong and Putri Marino does well to build in her vacant stare some depth that the writing so evidently lacks. Beyond that, especially after the first 15 minutes this only gets populated by corny stereotypes each of whom act as a crutch for weak story-telling. In the heroes corner we have the outcasts: a madman, a mad sex worker, an ex mad in love with the lead, a deaf fellow victim and a black man, ticking every box on the trauma checklist. In the villain corner we have the bad (chief), the sad (father) and the shady (perpetrator).
Amidst this there’s a menagerie of motifs: flashbacks told through hallucinating defunct television sets, a monster that can be seen by all survivors (cause they sure are all the same aren’t they?), a ufo sighting (cause no one believes your experience of having seen one, get it, get it!) and a bunch of other local spirits and customs. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, there’s a whole lot of telling and showing. Hat on a hat in shop full of hats.
Clearly Kamila is more interested in the aesthetic of being a survivor than plumbing for any insight, be it in essaying Pertiwi’s complicated homecoming or the complicity of the village in her fate. What’s more, as though the flashbacks and the overarching, overcommunicated theme weren’t enough, Kamila depicts the incident as some sick reveal in the final third. Rape here is an art object to be gazed at, not an evil to be reckoned with.
Now contrast this with Mayilaa, another film about domestic abuse. I didn’t quite enjoy watching this as it looks like the dozen other PSA films that are dumped on to streaming each week. Even so, I do recognise that Semmalar does enough to subvert depictions of abuse. For one, she does not show the abuser. And, two, she doesn’t reduce Mayilaa to her identity as a victim. Mayilaa breathes and moves in this world like any other and Semmalar has faith that her audience is aware that she does so with a baggage. Much like Four Seasons, Mayilaa too deals with religious-spiritual elements but where the former is used as an inert motif, Mayilaa uses ‘possession’ for the specific purpose of ‘giving voice’ to her grief. Of course none of this is original, but each choice is intentional and specific. There’s enough of an original voice here that is unfortunately burdened by the idioms of two genres: the message-driven-mass-Tamil-film and artsy-festival-film.
The end credits and Kamila’s conversation in extra-time revealed an entire team dedicated to research. Sad to report that all the research in the world isn’t sufficient to remould a fundamentally exoticising gaze.