Falling in Love Like in Movies

Bagus is a screenwriter. Years later he meets Hana again, the girl he loved at school, who has lost her husband and is still grieving. He proposes writing her a screenplay: a film about the two of them. The point is not to write it but to persuade Hana to fall in love again, and to do it the way films do. The story runs on two levels, the script being written and what actually happens. Bagus arranges his scenes as he wants them, and Hana refuses to say the written line. That resistance is the best thing in the film: the romantic-comedy shape is not big enough for a person's grief. Yandy Laurens wrote and directed. Ringgo Agus Rahman plays Bagus and Nirina Zubir plays Hana, with Alex Abbad, Sheila Dara Aisha, Dion Wiyoko and Julie Estelle in the cast. Dimas Bagus Triatma shot it. The film is entirely in black and white, and the choice belongs to the story: Bagus wants to see the world as a film. Ernest Prakasa and Suryana Paramita produced. It runs 118 minutes and opened in Indonesia on 30 November 2023. Who it is for: anyone who likes films about filmmaking and restrained romantic comedy. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. The telling is slow, the script-within-a-script structure confuses at times, and Hana's point of view gets less room.