"Yuni" - Film Review
Even if you make it through relatively unscathed, adolescence is a miserable time in a person’s life. Day in and day out, it’s constant upheaval and turbulent emotions that never seem to calm down. Adults expect their children to follow the plan they’ve laid out, but it’s also a time when their children are figuring out which path they want to pursue. Yuni brings audiences into the teenage world of Yuni (Arawinda Kirana) as she’s finishing high school. She’s torn between her desire to go to college and her family’s expectation that she get married. In Yuni’s community, if a woman rejects two proposals, it’s believed that she will never get married. It’s in this predicament that Yuni must discover what it is she wants for herself.
There is a quietness to the world Yuni introduces the audience to. As much as the film is posing questions about large concepts like marriage, societal expectations, and the future, Yuni finds joy in the small things. She loves the color purple and doesn’t see the point of poetry. She laughs with her friends, but also knows there are conversations she cannot have with them. The film is set in Indonesia amid the rise of Islamic conservatism. After-school programs are ending if they don’t fit within the religious norms, and young women are married before they graduate from high school. Yuni is trying to find herself within the changes that are occurring around her, but it’s not easy to navigate those teenage years in the best of times.
courtesy of film movement
Yuni pulls off the trick of having a lot to say about the current state of the world without seeming preachy. There’s talk of sexuality, virginity tests, and modern ideas in direct contrast with hundreds of years of tradition, but it’s presented as plain fact. The information is presented as-is and without bias to force the audience to take stock of their lives. Are they leading the life they chose or one heavily influenced by expectations that society constructed? It’s this immense specificity that allows Yuni to feel universal.
There is a common, inherent truth in teenage self-discovery. It’s a time when freedom feels both within reach and beyond comprehension. The path of discovery looks different to everyone. Film has seen its fair share of coming-of-age stories, but Yuni deserves to be recognized as something special. The verité approach is reminiscent of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s equally essential Mustang. The two movies share a sense of earnest honesty that allows them to document what it’s like to be a woman in this world. Yuni is the bare bones of storytelling, sharing a life experience for the sake of creating a commonality among the people of the world. The film is stunning, with an astounding amount of depth for a mere 95 minutes. Yuni is the sort of emotional gut punch that cinema does best.
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