Bangkok 09: The Forbidden Door

Posted on Wednesday September 30, 2009, 08:04 by Sam Toy in Under The Radar

I was interested in The Forbidden Door largely because of the praise I’ve heard for Indonesian director Joko Anwar’s previous film Kala (which I’ve still not seen). The earlier work, an Asian love letter to film noir, got rave reviews around the world, but The Forbidden Door has had a reasonably quiet time since its release in Anwar’s homeland back in January, even screening in the UK without much fanfare (I had no idea it had been on at Scotland’s Dead By Dawn festival) in May. This muted response after nearly a year on the festival circuit seems somewhat unusual, given how much fun it is - hopefully its appearance here, and soon at this year's LFF, will change that.

Joko Anwar is a student of cinema in the best possible sense: though he’s been making films for a few years, you get the feeling that he’s a major talent who’s about to truly bloom. Right now though, he’s at the end of the fledgling stage of his very promising career, still playing; mixing up and spitting out the influences he’s been Hoovering up since he was a kid. With Kala, that was apparently Fritz Lang’s M and a few others. With The Forbidden Door, it’s easily identifiable as Hitchcock (complete with a bitching set of Saul Bass/Bernard Hermann style opening credits) and David Lynch. Ok, I’ll use that very tired simile; he’s the Indonesian Tarantino.

He’s got the best opening shot that I've seen in this festival. A CCTV shot looks down over a dank, ‘50s style dining room (told you it was Lynchian). It lingers quietly for a few seconds, before a child is flung across the frame, crashing over the dining room table and out of shot again, before crawling back, obviously wounded by the fall. Then we fade to what feels like a different movie. Gambir (Fachry Albar), a gloomy artist who’s just had a hit with his exhibition of sculptures of pregnant women. His manager and friends are happy, but he’s not. “It’s all bullshit, and you know it,” he tells his sultry girlfriend Talyda (Mylene Klass-esque Marsha Timothy). My brow was furrowed at this point – it was all a bit overwrought for my taste. But then, cue those credits: all blood red, pregnant women with visible foetuses, clawing hands and Vertigo spirals. And you get it – we’re not meant to be attached to these characters; this is going to be fun. From here on in, it’s one of those where everyone’s got something to hide. To give you any specific pieces of the plot would be to spoil the many twists and turns later on – although there literally is a big, red, forbidden door, which gets a huge painting of an eye hung in front of it (told you it was Hitchcockian). Otherwise, I’ll just say that there’s impotence, overbearing mothers, abortion, child abuse, snuff films (see a pattern yet?), and a big, general sense of not-quite-rightness about the whole thing.

Since watching the film, I’ve read a few other reviews of it, and without wanting to sound arrogant, I think some of them have missed the point, and the humour within The Forbidden Door; throw child abuse in there, and suddenly everyone gets thrown off of the scent. As I mentioned earlier, I get the impression that Anwar is in a playful phase. Hell, along with the massive signposting, he even throws in ‘Why?’, Mantra’s Roy Orbison homage - not an Orbison original, you’ll notice (I believe this song was written for the movie) - to remind us that no, we’re not watching Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive, just an elaborate mash-up; to believe that The Forbidden Door is as serious or profound as its plot tells you it is, is a mistake. After all, would Hitchcock do such a thing?

In fact, the only thing that disappointed me about this was the ending. I’ve not read the novel from which this is adapted, but I was having such fun with the rampant subversion of the scenario that I wanted Anwar to go with a Lynch ending rather than the Hitchcock one he delivers – again, to say what that is before a general release would be criminal, but I was hoping for an even bigger ‘fuck you!’ than he manages – but that’s faint damnation in the face of high praise.