Smashing musical - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Smashing musical

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Opera Jawa is an Indonesian musical that reworks an episode from the Sanskrit poem Ramayana. The ancient and the modern world collide as a potter's wife is courted by a bullying, wealthy butcher.

Can she resist his attentions? And can her jealous, impoverished husband resist the desire to kill them both?

It's not easy to sum up this offering from Garin Nugroho. In a typically gorgeous tableau, little girls smash clay pots on the ground. Then their mother sings, "The market for earthenware has crashed!"

The one musical high-point is a man with ginormous breasts and a tiny mandolin; his voice is beautiful, his tunes catchy. He deserves a whole film to himself.

Opera Jawa
Cert: 12A

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