Raditya Dika is one of the Indonesia’s best-selling and best-loved authors. He became famous thanks to a blog in which he wrote of his misadventures as an awkward Indonesian student in Australia; this was then adapted into the best-selling book Kambing Jantan and then an unsuccessful film of the same name directed by Rudi Soedjarwo. This ironic twenty-nine-year-old made successful inroads in the film world last year, thanks to the adaptation of another one of his books, the curiously titled Brontosaurus Love (Cinta Brontosaurus).
Raditya Dika himself wrote the screenplay, and it was directed by Fajar Nugros; Brontosaurus Love was certainly one of the surprise hits of commercial Indonesian cinema in 2013. An original, lively comedy which never slides into vulgarity, the film was rather a unique adaptation. The original book is a collection of short stories which recall the author’s experiences in love. In the film, these side-splitting and unexpected episodes are merely a premise, condensed in an opening chapter which introduces the protagonist Dika, played by Raditya Dika himself, by now completely disillusioned with women and love. Hereon in, the film shows how Dika went on to immortalise his disappointments in a book, Cinta Brontosaurus, and his agent Kosasih’s attempts to promote it, sometimes in rather unorthodox ways. And so Dika finds himself working on a screenplay of a possible film version. Only that the director who optioned the book, Mr Soe Lim, who is behind successful horror films based on Indonesian folk myths like pocong (jumping mummies) and “crawling nurses”, obviously plans to distort the book and transform it into a scary movie. In the meantime, Dika meets Jessica, the girl who could finally convince him to change his mind about love, if it were not for a somewhat bizarre mother and an even more bizarre – and very hairy – brother…
Brontosaurus Love is one of those films where you cannot reveal too much beforehand, especially in terms of the various situations and absurd, exhilarating adventures the main character finds himself in. We can, however, state that it is the most entertaining Indonesian film to have hit the big screen for years.
And Raditya Dika’s talent, as writer and actor, is what really shines, thanks to his unusual ability to put his misfortunes, frustrations and failures on the line. He does it without self-pity and defeatism, but with a verve that makes his character lovable, despite his neuroses and narcissism. So much so that Raditya Dika has been offered a number of part in films in similar types of roles (Cinta Dalam Kardus by Salman Aristo and two other adaptations of his books: Manusia Setengah Salmon by Herdanius Larobu and the soon-to-be-released Marmut Merah Jambu, directed by Dika himself).
The real cherry on the cake of Brontosaurus Love, though, is the satirical view of the Indonesian film industry. The character of the inimitable horror film director, Mr Soe Lim, is truly irresistible, and the excerpts of his films are comic pearls. He is played with peerless skill by Ronnie P. Tjandra, who knows better than most that directors like Mr Soe Lim and the sort of films he makes really do exist in Indonesia!
Paolo Bertolin