Karina Salim (left) and Tuti Kirana shares a scene in What They don'€™t Talk about When They Talk about Love. (Courtesy of Cinesurya Pictures)

In What They don'€™t Talk about When They Talk about Love, visually impaired teenagers learn the language of love in words we may not know but understand the meaning nevertheless.

The movie serenades the lives of young women who see their physical limitations as gifts that will lead them to love of their lives. The optimism refrains this movie from being another teenage love flick with classic saccharine-sweet story.

Two best friends Diana (Karina Salim) and Fitri (Ayushita Nugraha) are students and roommates at a boarding school for the physically impaired.

Seventeen-year-old Diana is a myopic who can only see objects within a few centimeters of her eyes. She is the most privileged student at the school but she has an overbearing mother (Tuti Kirana) who worships physical beauty.

Diana is anxious because she has not yet begun her periods, despite her age.

Her blurry teenage life takes a sudden turn when a new student Andhika (Anggun Priambodo) grabs her attention and when he accidentally touches her, he lights up sparks within her.

Diana tries her best to attract the attention of her prince charming in languages she knows best: touch and scent.  

When the much-awaited menstruation finally happens, it only inflames the newly found passion she has for the boy because she feels that she has at last become a woman and it is destiny that it happened while she is in love with Andhika.

Andhika, however, is still coping with his new dark world and the new school while still trying not to lose the ties with his ex-girlfriend.

Twenty-year-old Fitri has been blind since birth and is happy that she has been able to get out of her small village and get to the school. She believes in ghosts and is convinced that a ghost granted her wish to get out her birthplace.

She is obsessed that a ghost doctor, who she believes roams the school compound, will also grant her wish to
be a celebrity.

Fitri tells the ghost about her troubles at the school'€™s pool every Thursday night '€” which is believed to be the sacred night of the week '€” accompanied by the rippling water.

Fitri has a boyfriend who takes advantage of her, but this relationship is soon impinged upon by deaf 30-something Edo (Nicholas Saputra), the foster son of an uneducated woman who sells food and lives within the school boundaries.

The street-raised and unruly man has a crush on Fitri and keeps his eyes on her whenever he can. One night Edo finds out he can pose as the ghost doctor to the blind Fitri.

Pretending to be the spirit, Edo persuades her to write him letters to ease the burden of her mind. Fitri, who has great respect for the ghost doctor, observe the advice. Fitri writes to him in Braille and Edo has much fun deciphering the letters.

The movie presents and then tries to offer the answer to the question: if a man falls in love with what he sees and a woman with what she hears, then how will Diana and Edo quench their yearnings?

Spanning a little over the 100-minute mark, director and screenwriter Mouly Surya gives of her best to set a cheerful atmosphere from the start, continuing with upbeat tunes, bits of graceful choreography, fragments of kindergarten plays and not once a cloudy day throughout the movie.

There are moments in the movie, however, where the carefree buoyant mood frames step into surrealism and also scenes that are so bright they are dark, which may be intentional.

Mouly also evokes the audience'€™s sensory experience through blurred frames, silent scenes, and colorful cakes.

The movie goes back and forth '€” in bits initially and later to a full scene '€” between the characters'€™ situation and an alternate reality in which the characters have no physical impairment.

In the alternate reality, Diana is a beautiful albeit somber ballerina who is even more dominated by her mother, and she does not even so much as glimpse at Andhika. Andhika is drunk with his love for his girlfriend, while Edo and Fitri are a couple whose romance is wasted in superfluous words.

Against this alternate reality, physical impairment is portrayed as a gift to the characters.

Karina flawlessly animates the fragile quiet porcelain ballerina doll that is Diana, as Ayushita delivers the contrast: outspoken and vigorous Fitri.

One might argue that Ayushita and Nicholas are to pretty to play characters from the lower class, but that is beside the point.

With its contradictions '€” or perhaps, because of them '€”  the movie is beautiful, poetic and intelligent, but one that may take a while to digest.

What They don'€™t Talk about When They Talk about Love is the first Indonesian movie to screen at the Sundance film festival and has won the 2013 Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) Award.

It will be screened in limited theaters starting May 2.

What They don'€™t Talk about When They Talk about Love
(104 minutes, Cinesurya, Amalina Pictures)
Director: Mouly Surya
Screenwriter: Mouly Surya
Cast: Karina Salim, Ayushita Nugraha, Nicholas Saputra, Anggun Priambodo, Lupita Jennifer, Tutie Kirana, Jajang C. Noer, Khiva Iskak, Alya Syahrani
Producers: Rama Adi, Fauzan Zidni, Tia Hasibuan, Ninin Musa

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