Ada Apa dengan Cinta?

Hello all--for what it's worth, I'm in a doctoral program on Indonesian politics and returned this semester after about a year's fieldwork, most of it in Jakarta.

I'm a big movie fan generally, so I went out as often as I could, and bought tons of local VCDs while I was there. This film was clearly the best of the lot, even though it's a few years old. The story is clear, the acting is excellent, and it stars an incredibly beautiful actress named Dian Sastro. She should be working in western movies, since, unfortunately, virtually every other new film I saw could not measure up to this one, and no actress is as good.

Since this is supposed to be a comment, not a review, I won't bore you with a plot summary. Suffice it to say that if you find this online, buy it. Even though it's a VCD, the transfer quality is good.

While everyone seems to be sick and tired of Hollywood teen flicks, Indonesia churns out one which is top-notch. I'm Malaysian, and Bahasa Indonesia is pretty different from Bahasa Malaysia although they're supposedly almost identical. I watched it in the cinema so there were subtitles, which helped a lot.

This is one teen flick that you'll regret you didn't take the time to watch. It revolves around average people leading average lives, which makes it so easy to relate to. It tells a story of the choices you've to make in your life. Choosing your friends or your boyfriend. Many people are faced with this challenge in life, and this movie excellently portrays Cinta's (Love; the girl's name) social life (involving her four best friends) and the boy whom she fell in love with.

She has two choices to make--choose her friends, or Rangga (the boy). She finally has to make this decision one day when Alya (who seems to be in a terrible state), her best friend, calls her and asks her out just when she's about to go and see Rangga.

What makes this movie so memorable, so beautiful is that it is no where near shallow. It revolves around the problems that plague teenagers around the world today, as well as political problems that many countries currently face. It also promotes "karya sastera", or literature, and poetry as well as music amongst teenagers. After all, it is literature that brings Cinta and Rangga together.

I watched this movie over and over, and each time I walked out of the cinema feeling strangely elated. "Ada Apa Dengan Cinta?" reminds you of how it was like being young and innocent and free. It reminds you of the beauty of young love, and the importance of friends. It reminds you of how the strangest circumstances can bring people together and forge a bond so tight that not even distance would never be able to separate them.

I just watched this film last week as part of the Indonesian Film

Festival in Melbourne - I'm studying Bahasa Indonesia at school

and am doing a project on kebudayaan remaja - youth culture.

Kids, this is a great movie. It's better than any teen flick churned

out by Hollywood in recent memory (it is, I would say, in the 10

Things I Hate About You league). It's not great for a 'foreign' movie

or whatever - it's great in it's own right.

It combines the age-old appeal of teenage romance with enviable

friendship, humour and the poignant sadness of Alya's situation.

Cinta is the kind of character girls aspire to - pretty, smart, gutsy as

all hell - and Rangga is, well, let's face it, he's hot as all get out.

There's some serious messages in this film, about friendship,

about honesty, about violence and trust, but luckily it steers from

being preachy. Maybe it's because the Indo film industry is less

jaded than that of Hollywood, but this movie gets right what so

many Hollywood teen flicks have gotten wrong.

Watch this movie. Fall in love with it. Trust me.

It's a local champ, and can be a very entertaining teen flick worldwide. Real characters fill this high-school love movie. The script smoothly runs the story, and strongly constructs the whole first love theme. The love-and-hate chemistry between the main characters works very well too. Actually, the scene where Rangga (the guy, Nicholas Saputra) dropped his precious book in Cinta (the girl, Dian Sastro) is too much of a coincidence... and simply the easiest way to move the story forward. Still acceptable, though. Supporting actress Ladya Cheryll (as Alya, Cinta's friend) delivers a very natural screen-stealing performance. Good music, good faces, good ending too. Overall, this is the kind of movie for a date, for a lazy Sunday afternoon, and for all time.

Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? What is wrong with love? that's a good question after having seen this movie. The movie never really becomes interesting for the intelligent audience. It is a story about love yes, but nothing special when you compare it to all the awful cinetron's (local soaps) that haunts the Indonesian television stations. "Ada apa dengan cinta" is just a soap for the cinema, and it does atract mostly teenagers. Well, it is actually about teenage love, and most teens who watch this movie think it is a movie in western style, different from the local Indonesian blockbusters. The actors however are really acting like amateurs, the story never gets really exiting, although the screams of some teenagers during the movie make you think you are watching a drama like "Shakespeare in love". Indonesian teenagers scream at any movie... For me it was very boring, although the picture and sound quality are much better than most Indonesian movies I have seen so far. I am not going to say that you should not see it, you have to judge for yourself, like you have to do with every movie. But if you expect something special from Indonesia that will perform well on the international filmfestivals, you've got it wrong. For that, Indonesian actors will need more training (especially their way of talking is overdramatic), and the Indonesian filmindustry will need more funds. Maybe the succes of movies like "Jelangkung" and "Ada apa dengan cinta?" will bring financial resources to make something more beautyfull?