I went into watching filmmaker Kamila Andini’s Before, Now & Then knowing that Laura Basuki won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival. And it is not surprising, she delivers a nuanced performance as Ino, the woman sleeping with the lead’s husband. However, if I didn’t know the award was for supporting performance, I would have been hard-pressed to guess whether she was the recipient or Happy Salma, who plays Raden “Nana” Suhani, the lead. Ino and Nana end up being companions, despite the husband that brought the pair together.
Ino could be classified as a mistress, but given the narrative of the story, I don’t think that would be accurate. She’s just a woman who sleeps with another woman’s husband. This is because of the complexities of their world. The film, which is set in Indonesia in the 1940s-1960s, basically opens with a younger Nana and her sister on the run because her father told them to get out because of the insurgents doing a communist purge and that he was forced to promise her in marriage, despite her already being married. She doesn’t know where her husband is, and she leaves the scene believing her husband and father to be dead. We actually see her father get decapitated in front of her in the film’s first distinct use of its dreamy style of bending its realities that will become a hallmark of the film that Andini co-wrote with the novelist Ahda Imran (based on the real-life of Raden Nana Suhani).
The chemistry between Salma and Basuki was off the charts. This is a quiet film; it doesn’t shout at you. It moves slowly through the world as Nana navigates a life that isn’t fulfilling. She isn’t happy in her marriage. He is not a cruel man, but it’s clear she’s with him more for safety than anything. When she discovers that her husband is having an affair, she does seek out and discovers Ino’s identity but she doesn’t resent Ino. She even leaves her children in Ino’s care. And as I said before, the pair end up being companions. I don’t mean that as a romantic euphemism. I mean that more in the sense for a woman (Nana) that has been isolated away from her world, Ino provides a grasp to her past.
When Nana first sees Ino, the woman who points her out refers to Ino as a communist. Based on this and their later conversations, I feel like she is a connection to the world she lost when Nana took up this life with her 2nd husband to survive. Ino becomes like a surrogate for the family she lost. And it gets expressed in this one great line, “Why is it that guilt always follows women.” This idea of the collective weight they both carry as survivors, both doing what they must to get through the changing landscapes of their world, first the Dutch and now the anti-communists. The trauma bonding and the complexity of the world they are thrust into is why I don’t view their relationship as wife and mistress but rather as two women surviving carrying the trauma of the past.
The title describes the narrative filmic style where multiple points of Nana’s life (for around 20 years) bleed together. This is done by her seeing visions of things that don’t belong in any given scene, adding to the dreamy quality of the film, that is further extenuated by the score.
Before, Now & Then will premiere theatrically at the BAM Rose Cinemas on August 25th, with additional markets to follow.
© 2020-2023. UniversalCinema Mag.