When I saw this movie in the cinema (to confirm I did not watch this on tv and it has never been on tv yet!) i started with high expectations. It seems that finally the Chinese community in Indonesia receives some recognition after being discriminated for ages and still being discriminated in many areas of life in Indonesia today. The movie tells us about a woman who goes back to Indonesia to find out about her parents: who they were , what they did. The movie starts with the worst scene of the whole film...she meets with supposed relatives, a bunch of young actors, full with make-up to make them look old. It is the worst thing of the movie, but luckely it is only for a couple of minutes so we can forget about this asap. The story in itself is interesting: a young prostitute gets saved by one of her customers, a Chinese businesman, to the dislike of many others who see him as a treath for their business. Happiness seems to be found till the moment the man gets arrested for making false banknotes. He escapes later to Thailand, and while his ennemies think he is death, he is preparing to come back and fight the Japanese who occupied Indonesia. But not only his old enemies are there, he also made new enemies and the supposedly happy ending soon becomes a sad ending. At moments, the movie is very interesting, with backflashes in black and white, and the leading actor (Salim) is doing a great job. However, the lack of experiences by the other actors, and the terrible way they articulate everything they say, makes this movie to one of the less interesting movies of the last years made by Indonesians. The book though is very interesting, and it could have been a great movie. However, it is not a bad movie, and at times entertaining and showing us much about Indonesian-Chinese culture and history. if you get a chance, rent the VCD and watch it (it only lasted a short time in the cinema).
Review of Ca-bau-kan
