DECEMBER 27 ― I was reading this book called Do The Movies Have A Future? by David Denby, a film critic for The New Yorker and found a passage in it that really resonated with what I’ve felt for a long time about genre movies.
He wrote that, “A movie genre ― any movie genre ― is not just a recurring group of stories, characters, and decors; it’s also a set of conventions that say something (perhaps more than does a freshly created, individual work of art) about the way we live ― about what we want, what we enjoy, and what we fear.”
He wrote this in a chapter about chick flicks, and the whole chapter played in my mind as I watched the recently released Manisnya Cinta Di Cappadocia, the latest film from director Bernard Chauly, writer Rafidah Abdullah and the Red Films gang.
While the Malaysian blogosphere has been buzzing recently about films like Lelaki Harapan Dunia, Ophilia and Terbaik Dari Langit, I really haven’t seen that much being written about the seemingly light and frothy entertainment that is Manisnya Cinta, which is a shame since I found it not only satisfying as a light and frothy piece of pop confection, but it also has lots of very interesting things to say about being a woman, especially a Malay and Muslim woman in Malaysia today.
The reason why I think this flick is worthy of further examination and also why not many are willing to give it even a cursory look is that it is very much a chick flick, which is not the same as being a rom-com.
As Denby has helpfully detailed in his book, chick flicks are always about a young woman learning who she is, what she wants and what she needs. While men are always around, they’re never really at the centre of the story, which is what differentiates chick flicks from rom-coms.
Knocked Up and The Proposal are rom-coms, but Bridget Jones’ Diary and Legally Blonde are chick flicks, for example. And, like it or not, it’s that female point of view that gives the movies their feminist power, if done right.
Further things to look out for is that the heroine is almost always independent, single, but not alone (she always has a best buddy or a circle of friends), and has money or at least buying power, which explains why everything looks nice and shiny in chick flicks, like the clothes, shoes, apartments and cars.
Where things get interesting for Manisnya Cinta is in the application of the rules of this genre to the reality of life as a Malay and Muslim woman, since the movie is adapted from the popular novel Manisnya Cinta by Anis Ayuni, which is a hit among the tudung-clad young Malay women crowd.
I, of course, haven’t read the source novel, so I can’t presume to know what’s preserved in the movie and what’s thrown out, but I have a sneaky feeling that the novel didn’t really have someone as glamorous as Fazura in mind as the lead character Ifti Liyana.
The very fact that someone who looks and dresses like Fazura does in the movie will have absolutely no problems pulling men at all, never mind being in the situation that she is in the movie is perhaps the movie’s biggest stumbling block in terms of believability.
But this is Malaysia, and we need film stars to carry films and get the financing to get them made, so I’ve decided way early on in the film that I’ll just go with it.
The real points of interest for me here is how Bernard and Rafidah skillfully and subtly weaved in questions about a Malay and Muslim woman’s place in the world today. I’m going to be dishing out some spoilers now, so if you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest you come back to this article after you’ve done so.
The story revolves around Ifti, a successful interior designer, whose long-time boyfriend (arranged by her family, of course) had to marry someone else as a result of impregnating her. She then meets Nazmi, who claims to be a bus driver and pursues her like mad, even to the point of following her to Turkey, where Ifti’s doing some sourcing of Islamic household knick knacks.
As all this is happening, we get periodic flashbacks to the family life of Ifti’s older sister, which was basically ruined by the husband’s infidelity and eventual second marriage as the sister is dying of breast cancer.
After the sister dies, it’s Ifti and her parents (and younger sister) who are left with the task of raising the eldest sister’s kids. After giving her heart to Nazmi, she then sees him with not only another woman, but also what looks like his own kid, which leads her to break up with him.
Slowly the brother-in-law starts to come back into their lives as he becomes a more responsible parent and then the possibility comes up that maybe it’s best for Ifti to just get together with him and raise the kids as one family.
It is this dilemma that makes this such an interesting adaptation of chick flick conventions into the reality of life as a Malay woman. As Denby said, chick flicks are always about a young woman learning who she is, what she wants and what she needs.
It’s obvious here that Ifti is learning about who she is (a non-tudung clad yet still religious young woman, as we see her consistently observing her five daily prayers), what she wants (against what her family wants, without resorting to being rude and disrespectful to her elders) and what she needs (love, of course, but in exchange for how much sacrifice?).
A Western (or Western-minded) woman will probably dismiss all this dilemma facing Ifti as unnecessary. But this is Malaysia we’re talking about, and like it or not a Malay woman still has to face these questions even in this day and age as we try to reconcile feminist ideals with the very Asian concept of filial piety, not to mention religion.
What I like about this movie is how it explored all this with a very even hand, giving every side of the story an even chance even though it would’ve been much easier to take the "enlightened" and Western point of view and dismiss all this as unnecessary bull.
Just like China’s runaway box-office hit Finding Mr. Right, this is an Asian take on a Hollywood genre that’s actually done right, which makes it far more interesting than a lot of the Hollywood products out there.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
