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OF LOVE AND EGGS
(RINDU KAMI PADAMU) |
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| Featuring: Fauzi Baadila, Nova Eliza, Jaja Mihardja, Didi Petet |
| Director: Garin Nugroho |
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Distributor: First Run Features |
| DVD release: 18 November 2008 |
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Runtime: 90 minutes
(1 disc) |
| Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen |
| DVD Features: Audio tracks (Indonesian), Subtitles (English), Discussion guides w/ director's notes, About Indonesia |
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From acclaimed Indonesian director Garin Nugroho comes this film about life around a Jakarta mosque. Nugroho, a gifted filmmaker, has done more than anyone else to break the stereotype of the world's largest Muslim country. One is reminded of his words from an interview published elsewhere:
Art is a medium for open dialogue. It is a public space for the meeting of different perspectives. Art can break barriers between people and make them more human again. It can bring about a rebirth of human feeling. That is art's role.
That humanist traditions are at the heart of Nugroho's filmmaking is apparent from his other works such as Leaf on a Pillow (1999), Birdman's Tale (2002), And the Moon Dances (1995), and Tokyo (1998). The gentleness and honesty in the portrayal of children, young adults, and people living outside the mainstream has always been the leitmotif of his films - and the endings are almost always open.
In Of Love and Eggs, he employs the same style to show life around a bazaar and mosque, the complex relationships between neighbors, parents, children and young lovers all intricately intertwined around eggs. Set around the holiday of Lebaran near the end of Ramadan, the emotional turmoils and melodramas in a working-class neighborhood include young love, the yearning for one's mother (the child characters have lost their mothers early on), watching earthquake footage on TV, and stopping a woman from committing suicide.
Eggs, beyond their obvious use as material objects, also become tools to show love, desire and approval. The last, shown as a young man's wish to cook egg noodles for the rich young girl he wishes to impress, is quite touching. Eggs also double as tools to impart humor; their breaking under hilarious circumstances injects a graet deal of mirth and laughter into the story. Overall, gentle humor and poignancy interweave throughout this lovely tapestry of life in a Jakarta neighborhood.
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