User reviews

I looking for quick review before watching this movie, and apparently the review goes beyond review to race debate. To Bambang Budiman or whatever your real name are, Indonesian Chinese is the biggest Overseas Chinese in South East Asia, and even bigger than Hongkong. So what you saying about Indonesian Chinese is very wrong and ill-inform, despite you claimed yourself as Indonesian Chinese (but live in Netherlands?).

About Indonesian movies. Yes, they are not really good, even the "art" ones. There are good directors, actors but one is lacking: good writers. The problem is that there are no literature culture in Indonesia. Most of Indonesian hate reading books, or even a subtitle of movies.

I really disagree about your opinion, Mr. Bambang Budiman.. Have YOU ever lived in Indonesia? Were you there on 1998? These stuff really happened or happening, to me and many other Indonesians with Chinese descendant. And the fact that they can make such an artful movie about this still really sensitive stuff is really amazing. Seems like you're commenting only about the Chinese in Thailand, Malaysia, etc. It is different in Malaysia or any other south east Asian countries, they don't discriminate as much. So I think you need to know that before saying all that stuff. I think it's great that there are Indonesian movies like this, it is honest and full of story and reality. It's not just some cheap horror or romance movies.

I just saw 52 movies at the CPH:Pix Film festival 2009, and this movie unfortunately fails in so many aspects. The theme of shedding some light on the problematic issue of Chinese immigrant population in Indonesia sounded very interesting in the program, and usually love avantgarde movies. But from beginning to end, i felt like i was watching a movie made by some art student that really wanted to make a point with every scene, but who does not seem to have learned how to put together a well presented movie. There are many interesting scenes, which in the hands of a good movie director would have been able to make a big impact. But instead you are just left with a feeling of watching something very boring and you don't really feel the the individual tableaux are connecting with each other.

Unfortunately this movie went to my bottom 5 list of the 52 movies seen at the festival.

I've just watched this movie yesterday during the FilmFest München. The movie was presented to quite a small audience, the director was present and talked a bit about his intentions before the movie, he received a motivated applause from the audience. It seemed that everyone was highly motivated to watch the movie.

When the lights went on after the movie, you noticed that more than 30% of the audience had left the room during the screening. I was so disappointed and angry when the lights went on, especially because of the moderator, who presented the movie, lifted our expectations with sentences like "this is one of the most provocing movies of this festival" before the screening started, that me and my girlfriend, who was totally confused, left the screening hall right after the end of the movie. So we didn't stay for the discussion with the director.

I'm really sorry for the director, but this movie is one of the worst movies I've seen so far. Its boring, has no conclusion, there is no dramaturgy, most of the shots are good for nothing, and after the movie you are just happy because you don't have to listen to a specific song from the movie anymore. You don't feel anything for the characters because of the lethargic expression of their emotions and the lack of confrontations. Its such a waste of time and effort.

And please, people, don't praise this movie just because it has good intentions. Racism and a immigration problems are a difficult topic and its important that directors make movies about it, but good intentions don't make this movie any better, its just really bad.

Now I understand why the moderator and the director felt the necessarily to explain the movie before the screening. Don't watch it.