Review: Virgin (2004)

Directed by: Hanny R. Saputra | 110 minutes | drama, romance | Actors: Laudya Cinthya Bella, Ardina Rasti, Angie, Ayu Azhari.

What’s the matter with Indonesian cinema? Of course, two recent films (see “9 Dragons” and this film “Virgin”) are too few to pass judgment, but the similarities between these two films are too striking to be ignored. It seems that the Indonesian audience likes a lot, a lot of drama, (implicit) sex, violence and above all a heavily moralizing tone. Mix those ingredients together, add them all a bit more, hire actors and actresses who look nice, can look well tormented, but above all cannot act and you get films that give the genre ‘disaster film’ their own interpretation. , and that lets you pass you by with vicarious shame.

“Virgin” is about three girls aged about sixteen. All three of them are still virgins and also have their own troubles. One comes from a rather poor family, the other never sees her parents and the third has a father who comes home with a different girl every night. Soon, little remains of the virginity of two of the three girls. Whether voluntarily or not, they come into contact with the opposite sex. Only Biyan, the actual protagonist, manages to keep her virginity. She only wants to give it away to a popular actor with whom she is secretly in love. Meanwhile, the girls find themselves in one turbulent situation after another involving sex, then drink and drugs, and then financial problems. One of the girls always comes out of the battle battered, and the mutual friendship is regularly put under pressure, but in the end the three make it remarkably easy and cheerful again. To then happily and blindly plunge into another traumatizing situation.

Stella and Ketie end up paying a heavy price for their debauchery and fail to realize their dreams. One of them, like her own mother, becomes unintentionally pregnant. The other sees her dream of becoming an actress very bitterly fulfilled because she accidentally ends up in a porn DVD. And Biyan? Her dreams do come true. She retains her virginity, despite agreeing at one point to prostitute herself to solve the three friends’ financial problems, and she gets her coveted actor. Even the fact that he tells Biyan in a seriously dramatic scene with his faithful dog eyes that he could never give her what she wants because he has such a small “case” doesn’t alarm Biyan. After all, true love conquers even the smallest penis …

However, even this scene isn’t the low point of the movie. These are the scenes in which poor Biyan returns home to an old man, a man she could turn to after fleeing her home situation. There she writes everything off in a truly torturous pathetic style with lots of “Oooh God …” cries in between. After she has finally written very explicitly and desperately that she will have to prostitute herself with a lot of sadness, and she is crying over the desk, the cute old man comes to see what is going on. He sees Biyan, looks at the screen of the computer, reads what she has written and says with a smile: “You write well! Have you ever been to a publisher? “… Well, quite a comfort.

Of course she follows this wise advice, in fact: her prospective client turns out to be that loving publisher. He runs his hand over his heart, swallows his sexual needs and publishes her book. It means an end in which everyone ends up well thanks to Biyan. The moral is clear: As long as you stay a virgin, you can even get away with a terribly poorly written book and an even worse made movie. Let that be a lesson to everyone!