Yuni

The struggle faced by teenage girls to resist being pressured into marriage, and give themselves a better set of life options, is still playing out for tens of millions all around the world. When it’s addressed in cinema, we tend to see it in its more extreme forms: tales of forced marriage, ‘honour’ violence and girls whose choices are constrained by extreme poverty. This film addresses a situation in which the pressure is less extreme but more insidious. It is probably more representative of the majority of such struggles, and it allows for a more revealing exploration of how cultural norms can coerce and constrain.

Yuni (Arawinda Kirana) is in her final year of high school in Indonesia. She’s a capable student and her teacher urges her to consider going on to further education. If it’s difficult to find finance, then a scholarship could be the solution, though to get one she will need to finish as one of the top three students in her class. It goes without saying that she will also need to be unmarried. Nevertheless, her friends are shocked when she turns down a proposal from a guy who hangs around near the school. With his long hair and his motorbike, he’s considered by her peers to be a great catch.

Before long, Yuni has a second suitor: a wealthy older man who offers money and gifts to her family if she will become his second wife, as long as she’s a virgin on her wedding night. Whereas this scenario might often sound creepy to cultural outsiders, and there’s also a danger of such a man looking ridiculous for chasing after a teenager, writer/director Kamila Andini treats him sympathetically. He’s patient and polite, eventually confessing that the whole thing is really about his desire to impress his mother. Once Yuni starts to take control of her life, he seems distinctly more vulnerable than she is.

Kandini isn’t interested in stories about cruel, powerful men and helpless girls, or girls who are desperate to devote themselves to some other passion. Everybody here is complicated and insecure on some level. Life is messy, and most people do what’s expected of them without giving it much thought. At school, other girls’ gossip sets a moral agenda. There is superstition: to turn down two marriage proposals would be bad luck. Yuni develops a connection with shy boy who likes poetry. She’s exploring her sexuality; he’s sweet, devoted, available. In one scene, a group of girls discuss the possibility of female masturbation, and it seems to represent their dawning awareness that they are people, that they might be free to move through the world as men do if only they have the courage to seize that freedom.

Like most teenagers, Yuni doesn’t really know what she wants – except, perhaps, for the freedom to be confused and to figure it all out at her own pace. At school, she wears a uniform like everyone else, but always with a signature hint of purple. By the end of the film, she will have a purple streak in her hair, as if her vision of herself and the actuality are gradually coming together. It’s a colour traditionally associated with widows. Adopting it at this stage in her life. Yuni is breaking the mould.