DMovies - Your platform for thought-provoking cinema

Before, Now & Then (Nana)

A modest yet highly stylised drama, this Indonesian film seeks to illuminate the nuances of the feminine experience - live from Berlin!

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

A once stylish yet reserved, opulent yet modest, Before Now & Then creates a reflective portrait of a country in turmoil through the romantic experiences of one women. More of a contemplative character portrait than a traditional romance, it offers rewards in its resplendent filmmaking while smartly examining the nuances of the feminine experience.

Nana (Happy Salma) has a comfortable life. She lives on a large Dutch colonial estate alongside her husband Mr Darga (Arswendy Bening Swara) and children, hosting gatherings of women where they listen to music, eat food and talk about family. But her dreams suggest otherwise, reminding Nana of her violent past escaping the coups and genocides that characterised 60s Indonesia. Having lost her first husband and child in the coup, she remembers the war in vivid detail, unable to move forward in a country that’s on the cusp of rapid change.

The role of women in this patriarchal society seems yet to be defined. While men are free to go and do as they want, as seen through Mr Darga’s dalliances with other women, Nana gathers the small pleasures while she can, like smoking a cigarette on the terrace or playing with her children. At the meat market she meets the mysterious Ino (Laura Basuki) — with a kind smile, she simply radiates empathy, allowing Nana to figure out how to navigate this new reality.

It’s not only Nana who seems stuck between past and present; the film itself has little concern with traditional narratives, instead giving us a full sense of who Nana is. A lot of the time, we simply watch her thinking, captured against the gorgeousness of her house and almost always impeccably dressed. Her daughter asks her why women’s hair has be kept up: the answer is “to keep secrets”, the likes of which are slowly revealed to us piecemeal throughout this carefully crafted story.

A great sense of romanticism and unspoken longing comes through the music, mixing contemporary 60s songs, traditional and a lush score that moves between waltzes and playful string movements. The music, bringing to mind In The Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000), is almost constant throughout the film, almost acting against the slowness and consideration of the characters themselves. Credit must go to Salma herself, able to command the camera and allow us to see her perspective even when it seems like she’s not doing much at all.

It’s likely that many of the cultural and feminine nuances of the story eluded me — it’s not particularly illuminating for anyone learning about mid-twentieth century Indonesian history for the first time — yet once I settled into its rhythms, I found it to be a fine, absorbing aesthetic experience, even if I was never fully enraptured by its style.

Before, Now & Then plays in Competition at the 72nd Berlin Film Festival, running from February 10th to 20th.


By Redmond Bacon - 12-02-2022

Redmond’s tastes are pretty diverse – from the neglected cop classic Tango and Cash (Andrei Konchalovsky,1989) the lesbian drama Show Me Love (Lukas Moodysson, 1998) to Scorsese’s best film:...

DMovies Poll

Are the Oscars dirty enough for DMovies?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Most Read

Sexual diversity is at the very heart of [Read More...]
Just a few years back, finding a film [Read More...]
Forget Friday the 13th, Paranormal Activity and the [Read More...]
A lot of British people would rather forget [Read More...]
QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN A candidate’s [Read More...]
Pigs might fly. And so Brexit might happen. [Read More...]

Read More

Peter von Kant

François Ozon
2022

Redmond Bacon - 10-02-2022

Francois Ozon's male version of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant never justifies its own existence, either as a remake or as a portrait of Rainer Werner Fassbinder himself - on all major VoD platforms on Monday, February 6th [Read More...]

Rimini

Ulrich Seidl
2022

Redmond Bacon - 11-02-2022

The great Austrian director Ulrich Seidl returns with another masterpiece, a character portrait of a man simply too big for one film to contain - on VoD on Monday, September 4th [Read More...]

Flux Gourmet

Peter Strickland
2022

Redmond Bacon - 11-02-2022

Noise meets food in this culinary British comedy, using a horror-aesthetic while hanging out in a strange fantasy world - now on all major VoD platforms [Read More...]