They Say I’m a Monkey

Indonesia, 83 min., 2008, Indonesian with English Subtitles

“Once upon a time, my mother had a pet leech which she kept in a 2-storey dollhouse in her bedroom.” The Indonesian Mommie Dearest scene early on warns you in no uncertain terms this film will shrink from nothing: glam movie star mum forces her small daughter to fish out and eat up the vegetable she’d thrown up in the loo. Yet we’re not talking cheap tricks here: we’re not forced to gaze down the loo for a simple ew moment. This is about oppression and the struggle for self-possession, body and soul.

Separated from Dad, Mommie Dearest has acquired a hunky young musician boyfriend. He drapes his arm around the squirming girl and a leech is wriggling on her young shoulder as he removes his hand. Disgust is so elegantly conveyed it takes your breath away. And soon the leech is on her thigh as he drives her to school. Now a Medusa-tangle of heat-seeking leeches enter the water as he drops his towel and steps into her bath, whose water turns red with blood.

The most powerful scene is leechless, though: Mommie Dearest is dragging the little girl down narrow red-carpeted cream-walled hotel corridors in search of the philandering leech. The girl can only sink to the floor and watch as Mommie Dearest throws herself against a door: “I know you’re in there! Your daughter is out here!”—kicking and screaming hysterically, “Open the door!” Cut to ghostly beings in a playground and the sense of unreality is complete.

‘They say I’m a Monkey’ is based on writer-director Djenar Mesa Ayu’s own celebrated short stories. It so happens she’s the daughter of a famous movie star, so one wonders how much she has cannibalized her own life, and how much that might have cost her, to manifest this hauntingly intense, poetic, bloody coming of age. (Alice Skinhead)

Director : Djenar Maesa Ayu
Writer : Djenar Maesa Ayu, Indra Herlambang
Editor : Wawan I. Wibowo Arifin “Cuunk”
Cinematographer : Roby Taswin 
Music : Titi Sjuman, Wong Aksan 
Cast : Titi Sjuman, Henidar Amroe, Ray Sahetapi 
Producer : Djenar Maesa Ayu, Riyadh Assegaf