Review by Beatrice On 12-Apr-2024
Orpa is sure that her daughter will return home. Her husband Abram has died and they need to have the funeral ceremony.
We are in Rote Island, Indonesia.
Marta returns but is obviously confused.
She can only smile with the caged birds she follows in the trees and often cannot get down.
She likes to bathe naked, happens to see presences, and cries in despair.
It soon becomes clear that she has suffered something terrible, certainly sexual abuse.
One day, as Datuk tries to rape her she hits him, severely injuring him with a branch. She pursues him and when he is welcomed into a dwelling she sets the fire.
A trial sentences the family to onerous monetary compensation as well as keeping Marta locked and chained in a hut.
After a few months, due to bleeding it is discovered that the girl is pregnant therefore someone has continued to abuse her.
A wonderful photograph of the place, along with the contrast with the misogynistic mentality, portray a rather unfamiliar historical geographic cross-section.
Bertha, the sister begins an investigation to find out who is responsible and because of this she becomes a witness to something irrevelable to the homophobic community. She is therefore captured and killed. The women begin a strenuous battle for women's rights, with demonstrations of great social denunciation.
The identification of the perpetrator makes known a ritual, certainly local, of repentance and acknowledgement of guilt, which is incredibly effective and engaging. A finale of discovery, vindication, and resistance make this poignant film an astonishing experience of traditions, cultures, and unexpected if dutiful struggles.
An original filmic structure opens up knowledge of distant realities, though close by often cross-cutting, unfortunately universal themes.
A furrow of cultures finds a common trace that of the persecution of the feminine, an atavistic and violent tattoo that penetrates from the past to the present in testimony to the need for a pervasive and incessant daily struggle that allows no pause nor indulgence on pain of perpetuating a resistant and intrusive social injustice that can no longer be tolerated.
Orpa docet and the women of Rote Island follow...fierce.
Strong women are able to dress in nothing but look like everything. It is their soul that dresses them, it is the strength of themselves that surrounds them. And it is precisely this sometimes difficult presence of theirs that makes it worth having known them.
12-Apr-2024 by Beatrice