Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A young Australian reporter tries to navigate the political turmoil of Indonesia during the rule of President Sukarno with the help of a diminutive photographer.
Peter Weir's atmospheric political romance benefits enormously from Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson's chemistry, but it's Linda Hunt's Oscar-winning cross-gender performance as Billy Kwan that elevates the acting category to exceptional. Weir's cinematography captures the humid, volatile tension of Jakarta beautifully. The plot itself is a solid but somewhat conventional romance-amid-political-upheaval structure that doesn't fully resolve its promising thematic threads about witness and complicity, leaving the ending feeling slightly rushed and understated. The film's voice is distinctive — Weaver's narration and the shadow-puppet framing device give it a poetic quality — but not singular enough to earn a top novelty score.