With origins in Indonesia and Malaysia, satay is a dish of skewered meat, cooked on top of a grill over a charcoal fire. The cook fans the fire, the billowing smoke blows with it an alluring smell that lingers on any piece of clothing.

If there was a most unlikely place where you’d see this dish referenced, this movie review would probably be it.

Director Mouly Surya’s thirst for cold blood in her latest movie Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts, and the actors’ commitment to it, is what animates the film.

Split into four parts — titled the Robbery, the Journey, the Confession and the Birth — the movie tells of a woman on Sumba Island in East Nusa Tenggara, exacting revenge on those who wrong her.

To absolve the sins of rape and robbery, murder becomes a necessity; the alternative — having the cops take care of things — is simply a nonstarter. Marlina (Marsha Timothy) won’t acquiesce in the impotent law enforcement, so she poisons her robbers, reaches for a sword, severs the head of her rapist (Markus, played by Egi Fedly) and carries it around.

Though delirious and violent — a mummy of Marlina’s dead husband sits on the floor in her tiny house, the blood spilled by the sword, Markus’ mangled body that walks around playing an instrument — the movie brims with impressionistic restraint and satisfying dark humor.

The audience at the film’s premiere that I went to laughed at one point, even when the tension hadn’t quite let up. Yes, the film shines with its build-ups, but it is still largely a simple, muted affair; the dialogues are bare and infrequent.

Marlina, while never explicit in its finger-wagging, hints at crimes often perpetrated in small, underdeveloped areas. Take the law enforcement again: When Marlina brings her case to an officer, one of the questions directed at her is “Why didn’t you fight back?” (Franz, one of the bad guys, played by Yoga Pratama, tells Marlina during a scene that “women love to play the victim”).

Also, why didn’t Marlina bury her husband? Poverty can let the dead stay, after all. So I think the Island of Sumba becomes a stand-in for areas where these things happen.

The island was also gorgeously shot. Mouly’s direction, together with Yunus Pasolang’s cinematography, makes for a picturesque movie, standing in stark contrast to the film’s casual bloodletting.

Its geographical accuracy — the accent work, the Christian-sounding names (Franz, Markus) — has also been checked by the scrupulous crew. The score — composed by Zeke Khaseli and Yudhi Arfani — also deserves a special shout-out: It is soft, minimal and complements the bewildering nature of the film.

Taking matters into her own hands, Marsha imbues her character with careful ruminations. She telegraphs her anguish through her eyes, her movement never betraying her intent. When her rapist threatens a few more guests, Marsha’s eyes mask Marlina’s fear, but her composure prevails. Contemplating murder (and later succeeding) probably helps.

Characterizations are parceled as clues (maybe Franz owes his life to his gang, that’s why he’ll go to extreme lengths to retrieve the severed head of his boss), and so the movie puts together the complete picture of its characters, told by the disparate clues scattered all over it.

Mouly’s previous films — 2008’s fiksi. and 2013’s What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love also star women as their central characters.

Marlina lets its titular character command all the ordeals that befall her and others close to her. And one of them is Novi (played by Dea Panendra), a friend of Marlina who’s 10 months pregnant. She’s in complete control of her own story. Dea also displays a wide range of emotions, serving the storyline so well that she doesn’t fall into the trap of the reserved fixer-upper.

The idea for this film came from director Garin Nugroho, who gave Mouly the seeds and let her develop them with her co-writer Rama Adi.

With this film, she takes Indonesian cinema to new heights, and not just the ones brought by the festival tours (the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival) or its international appeal (the film has been picked up by the Brooklyn-based distributors KimStim and Icarus Films, according to Indiewire).

At times unnerving, but all around glorious, Marlina, now in theaters, shows the limits to the potency of an Indonesian film by gamely, satisfyingly crossing them.

— Photos courtesy of Toronto International Film Festival

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Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts

(Cinesurya Pictures, 90 minutes)

Directed by Mouly Surya

Starring Marsha Timothy, Egi Fredly, Yoga Pratama, Haydar Salishz, Dea Panendra