Another Trip to the Moon: Indonesian folklore fantasy a visual treat

Tara Basro as Asa and Ratu Anandita as Laras in Another Trip to the Moon.

Whanganui Film Society will screen modern Indonesian film Another Trip to the Moon (Menuju rembulan) next Monday night.

Based on Indonesian legends, this dreamy fantasy unfolds without any spoken dialogue. The daughter of a shaman escapes her mother's clutches by hiding deep in the forest with her lover.

"Indonesian myths are updated via the magic of wide screen digital in director/co-writer Ismail Basbeth's quietly beguiling debut Another Trip to the Moon., wrote Neil Young in the Hollywood Reporter.

"Accessibly exotic in its initial evocations of a timeless idyll, the picture throws a couple of bold narrative curve-balls as it builds towards a satisfying, enigmatic finale.

"The screenplay almost entirely dispenses with dialogue, apart from a handful of whispery and unsubtitled incantations.

"But it's not hard to work out what's going on. Early stretches depict a pair of graceful lovers-identified in the credits as Asa (Tara Basro) and Laras (Ratu Anandita)-enjoying an idealised, atavistic hunter-gathering lifestyle in a placid forest, with Asa particularly handy with a bow-and-arrow.

"Moving between reality, fantasy, dream, hallucination and symbolic representation, Basbeth crafts a strangely alluring form of sensual fairy-tale in which quotidian objects and places take on magical qualities.

"It's essentially a character-study of the impassively self-possessed Asa, with Basro seldom off-screen as a young woman capable of moving between epochs with a natural, animal poise."

Film Society half-year memberships are available to purchase online at
whanganuifilmsociety.org.nz at $45 or $40 discounted (for students, Gold Card holders and Community Service Card holders).

Memberships can also be purchased at the theatre before screenings.
Another Trip to the Moon screens at the Davis Theatre, Whanganui Regional Museum, Watt St, on Monday, September 11 at 7pm.