What's Up with Cinta?

Cinta is at a school in Jakarta and moves with four close friends; the group are among the most visible girls in the school and they produce the literary magazine. The poetry prize is won by the group every year. This year somebody else wins: Rangga, a boy who talks to nobody, sits alone and reads poems. Cinta approaches him. The group treats it as betrayal. Rudy Soedjarwo directs. Dian Sastrowardoyo plays Cinta and Nicholas Saputra plays Rangga. It opened on 8 February 2002 and runs a hundred and twelve minutes. Its place in Indonesian cinema is large. Domestic film had almost stopped after the economic crisis of the nineties; this was a great commercial success and was taken as the start of a new period. The subject is friendship as much as love. The hierarchy inside the group, the pressure of loyalty and what it means for one person to step away are at the centre. It caused argument in Indonesia; conservative circles objected to the kissing scene and it was cited as the first Indonesian teen film to include one. The poems Rangga reads and the books that appear in the film became a generation's reading list. A sequel, spin offs and a television series followed. Who it is for: anyone curious about Asian teen romance and Indonesian cinema. Who it is not for: the template is familiar, the acting is amateur in places, and the narrative slides into melodrama in the second half.