text: Hello all--for what it's worth, I'm in a doctoral program on Indonesian politics and returned this semester after about a year's fieldwork, most of it in Jakarta.<br /><br />I'm a big movie fan generally, so I went out as often as I could, and bought tons of local VCDs while I was there. This one I saw in the theater, since it opened while I was there, and, thankfully, closed soon after. <br /><br />Who was the intended audience for this film? The spoiled wives and daughters of the Indonesian super-elite whose antics are weakly and ineffectively parodied? The vast majority of Indonesians who could never afford even a single dish, let alone a full meal, in the film's central restaurant location? Or gay Indonesian males, whose dilemma in the country's Muslim-dominated society is reduced to absurdly simplistic, how-to-respect-yourself preaching. <br /><br />If all this wasn't bad enough, the soundtrack was either recorded or mixed so ineptly that even native-speaking Indonesians couldn't hear many of the lines.<br /><br />In brief, if you're looking for a cutting-edge gay-themed film from a region of the world that seems among the least likely to produce such an animal, forget it. "Westler" from the early '80s, or "My Beautiful Laundrette," from the same era, succeed far better in putting a happier face on dealing with homophobia, and do so by showing not telling through incessant, wordy scenes. <br /><br />Overall, an unfortunate waste of money in a country that still can't educate all of its children nor keep them healthy.