Best International Film: China, India, Indonesia

by Cláudio Alves

This journey through the Best International Film Oscar submissions has taken us to Europe and Latin America thus far, leaving some continents sorely underrepresented. In hopes of remedying that, this entry shall focus exclusively on Asian contenders. They are the latest work from a respected auteur who has represented China seven times before. From India, an award-winning feature debut shot on a tiny budget and severe minimalism. Finally, Indonesia brings us a beautiful character study in a hundred shades of purple…

CLIFF WALKERS (China)

Zhang Yimou's frozen thriller follows four Chinese agents who infiltrate 1930s Japanese-controlled Manchukuo in the 1930s. Their mission is code-named "Utrennya," and their objective is to locate an internment camp escapee, securing the testimony of someone who has seen the horrifying human experimentation perpetrated by the Japanese Army. Trudging through the snow, crossing borders across a desolate forest, they split into pairs, trying to avoid capture, death, or worse – being tortured until they betray the Communist party, compromise their asset. But, of course, the plans go awry. This wouldn't be a very good thriller if they went smoothly. 

While the spy games are perfectly presentable, there's a limit to how much excitement the director can get from the accumulating double-crosses and cryptic talk. The biggest issue is the screenplay and how it fails to define the characters beyond their mechanical roles. As the stakes get higher and higher, the narrative threads get caught up in tight knots. It's hard to care for these cardboard good guys. Furthermore, despite the complicated story, the morality is rather simplistic, politics flattened into easy binaries that make the drama feel more toothless than it should. 

Thankfully, Zhang Yimou remains a master behind the cameras, making up for the anemic text with technical wizardry. After the grayscale of Shadow's art direction, it seems he wants to stay within a limited color palette, defining the movie's best shots by the contrast of white snow and an endless collection of black winterwear. Amid the wool tweed, the furs, leather, and knits, a human drama unfolds, but the sartorial spectacle is much more interesting. Cliff Walkers is a visual delight above all else, making up for the cinematography's digital smoothness with an array of sets full of texture and the burning kiss of CGI frost. B-

PEBBLES (India)

Winner of the Golden Tiger at the Rotterdam Film Festival, P.S. Vinothraj's Pebbles is almost as unforgiving as its landscape. It's an inhospitable hell made up of rock, stone, dry earth with cracks all over it, barren to its core. It's also oddly beautiful when photographed by Vignesh Kumulai and Jeya Parthuban's digital camera. The images aren't necessarily painterly, but their harshness is riveting nonetheless. Even amidst its cruelty, there are small pools of grace. Sometimes it's the silhouette of a woman, out of focus in the distance. Other times, it's the majesty of a faraway mountain, dwarfing the petty humanity happening under its shadow. 

The story of Pebbles is simple to the point that it feels like an ancient tale, all about primordial forces and old lessons. It's told in two movements, a voyage in search of retribution, violent justice, and the subsequent return, once the trip has proven fruitless. An alcoholic man, like rage personified, drags his son through aridness. The patriarch is convinced his wife wants to leave him and has decided to confront her with their small child in tow. Fearing for his mother's safety, the boy tries to delay the furious father. 

In the meantime, the camera captures the surrounding people, miniature tableaux that speak of a world much vaster than this family quarrel. It's in those people, living on the sidelines of the tale, that Pebbles reveals its lyrical heart. The marginal actions of a hungry family chasing mice to eat are juxtaposed to their youngest member's wandering eye. Her stomach only minimally filled, a girl gets distracted by a rainfall of helicopter seeds. At that moment, the movie too forgets about its miseries and gets lost in the magic of the moment. It took my breath away. B

YUNI (Indonesia)

The world of Yuni is purple. She's obsessed with the color, collecting all sorts of objects that shine with the royal hue. Even her underwear is purple, as the movie's opening shows, watching her prepare for another day of school in a contemporary Indonesia where modernity and tradition are always in a game of push-and-pull. The symbology of the color isn't clear at first. Still, by the end of the movie, when the protagonist is drowning in it, one finds its meaning as a personal objection to patriarchal expectations, its forces. Purple is the color of royalty, it's associated with power, wisdom, and spirituality. It's also the color of widowhood. 

Despite the nonending conversations of marriage, one gets the sense that Yuni would rather be a widow than a bride. She's seen what happens to girls who get carted off to marry men they don't care for. The young women are tragically doomed, either stuck in loveless unions that cut the rose of independence on its bud or ostracized for running away from their husbands. And yet, the societal pressure is too hard to bear. Even in a temple of learning, outside forces threaten to impose purity tests and ban such simple fun as band practice. Director Kamila Andini makes us feel all the walls closing on her protagonist but never allows the movie to become airless.

Rather than asphyxiating, Yuni reflects its titular character's youth, her boundless vitality. The film flies when it acknowledges her willful temperament, forming a coming-of-age narrative of uncommon maturity, commendable complexity. Never idealized or reduced to mere victimhood, Yuni shines bright, a diamond in the rough with her ugly sides, bouts of adolescent narcissism, selfishness. Actress Arawinda Kirana is an excellent subject for Andini's camera, articulating all the facets of Yuni with the effortless precision one would expect from a much more experienced thespian. We're always on edge watching her, asking ourselves how far Yuni will go to ascertain control over her own life. B+

Oscar Odds? From these three, Cliff Walkers is probably the likeliest to get shortlisted. Its production values are off the charts, and Zhang Yimou is not unfamiliar to AMPAS. Three of his past movies have been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, while Shanghai Triad, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower were recognized in other categories. Pebbles has just received an Independent Spirit nomination, so it's in the race too. That leaves Yuni as the one whose shortlisting would be most shocking.

Comments

[Fadhil]

I LOVE YUNI SO MUCH!!! That ending❤️
It is the strongest Indonesian submission in years and it should be noted that it won the Platform Prize at TIFF this year, so it does have international recognition.
Really rooting for it at the Oscars!