As complicated the title
of this film is, the simplicity of its narrative is something that I more than
appreciate. Through presenting us with a glimpse into the lives of two students
at a school for the visually-impaired in Jakarta, director Mouly Surya
confronts us with themes that reach beyond conventional ideas often featured
coming-of-age romantic movies.
Admittedly for myself, What They Don’t Talk
About When They Talk About Love is a film whose ideas I have not completely grasped,
but perhaps this is what makes it all the more fascinating.
Surya’s name might be
familiar to film audiences for her latest work, which has been thriving in the
film festival circuit since its debut in the 2017 Cannes Director’s Fortnight.
Although it was only after I caught Marlina The Murderer in Four Acts at the
Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) this year that I finally got
round to watching this film, my interest in Mouly Surya’s was piqued by the
featuring of this film in a special section at the Karlovy Vary International
Film Festival (KVIFF) this year, which I was unfortunately unable to get
tickets for. At that point of time, I had been travelling for more than two
months; I was part-proud and part-sentimental to have discovered this film
which came to fruition through efforts made so close to home. Furthermore, What
They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love had a screenplay penned by Surya herself – in this way, one might
construe this film worthy of watching for, if nothing else, the raw voice of a
contemporary female Indonesian filmmaker.
One of this film’s leads,
Diana, can only see things within a few inches of her face. She falls in love
with Andhika, a new blind student who accidentally touches her shoulder one day
in class. Another lead, Fitri, is completely blind. She
respects and consequently falls in love with a spiritual doctor who, in the
spirit of dramatic irony we find out way before Fitri, is actually
Edo, a deaf punk boy in disguise. With these characters, the title of this film
seems almost cruel – if Fitri talks Edo
would not be able to hear, and while Diana and Andhika can talk to each other
they will never be able to see each other’s faces properly.
Seemingly, as it stands, film audiences are mostly part of a privileged lot. Surya certainly makes us
realise this; yet she also makes an interesting decision to juxtapose scenes of
Diana and Fitri trying to reach out to their partners through other senses
against dream sequences of a “what-if”. What if Diana, Fitri, Andhika and Edo
had perfectly functioning senses? Surya shatters our hopes for a pure and
perfect world by showing that utterances such as a “wish to be deaf and mute” –
as spoken by a what-if Edo with perfect senses in his desire to shut out his
wife’s words – in fact make our world the cruel one to live in. Instead of
finding ways to break down barriers, we yearn to isolate ourselves instead.
Perhaps it is only
through our own flaws that we learn to put our faith in others, and perhaps
communication barriers are more self-imposed than anything else. As clichéd and
blindly optimistic the idea of love without boundaries might sound, What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love expresses this idea in a grounded way with a tinge of magical realism that I gladly took in to muse over.
- Kathy Poh