Position Among The Stars - review - Film - Arts

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This is the last part of Dutch-born director Leonard Retel Helmrich's documentary trilogy - a glorious, whizzily poetic portrait of a dysfunctional Indonesian clan, mostly set on the chaotic streets of Jakarta. Centre-stage is Rumidjah, a pint-sized and jaunty Catholic matriarch obsessed with improving her family's status. If there were a game-show called "I'm a Peasant - Get Me Out of Here!" Rumi would be its poster-girl.

Some of the film's set-pieces were almost certainly staged. Others - involving violence - just as certainly weren't. One suspects the family, for their own reasons, chose not to swat this fly on the wall.

All of Rumi's hopes are pinned on her dead daughter's child - but the spoilt, sulky, sad teenager Tari has plans of her own. Meanwhile, Rumi's Muslim daughter-in-law, Sriywati - who does something extraordinary with her husband's "fighting fish" - is almost as intense. Tari is headed for college; Sriywati is headed nowhere. By the time the credits roll, you ache for them both.

Position Among The Stars