In his first feature, Tumpal Tampubolon brings some teeth – literally – to the long-running “maternal horror” subgenre by unleashing an explosive mother-son relationship amidst menacing giant crocodiles in a rickety amusement park in rural Indonesia. Swimming in a predictable narrative, Crocodile Tears keeps its head above water with strong performances from its cast and a production design that elevates the feeling of uneasiness called for by the story. Bowing at the Singapore Film Festival after its autumn festival tour of Toronto, Busan and London, the Indonesian-Singaporean-French-German coproduction is a showcase example for young Indonesian filmmakers mashing up genre codes to attract international attention.
First things first: no crocodile tears are shed in Crocodile Tears, either of the literal or proverbial kind. Offering a straightforward story anchored to simple emotions – an overbearing single mother, her feeble manchild of a son, and a young woman placing herself in peril by standing in between the pair – Tumpal Tampubolon continues his on-screen meditation on young men’s Oedipal instincts, the same theme that drives his award-winning short film The Sea Calls for Me, in which a boy fashions a discarded blow-up doll into a surrogate mother.
Set in a small town in Indonesia, the story revolves around Johan (Yusuf Mahardika), a young man who spends his time running the family’s dilapidated crocodile park. When not cleaning the grounds or feeding live poultry to the rapturous reptiles, the eager youth runs errands in town. It’s a chance for him to connect to women – only most of them mock him as a smelly country bumpkin.
The person most disturbed by Johan’s bubbling desire is his mother (Marissa Anita), who lectures him for being “unclean” after discovering some suspect stains on his underwear. But her concern is less about morality and more about her own suppressed desires: with her husband long gone, she shares her bed with her son and sleeps with him locked in her tight embrace every night.
Torn between his feelings for mama and his wish to break away from his grimy existence, Johan’s ambivalence towards his mother’s domineering personality turns into straightforward rebellion after he meets the new-in-town karaoke bar hostess Arumi (Zulfa Maharani). A headstrong type who has no qualms about dissing both wolf-whistling louts or her own friends, Arumi soon discovers her new lover’s complicated relationship with his mother — as well as connecting his missing father and the alligators the family feeds every day.
Having passed through myriad script-writing labs and pitching markets in Southeast Asia and Europe before attaining its final on-screen form, Crocodile Tears is a polished thriller that could rival any of its commercial counterparts at home. The film’s first half hour is sprinkled with surprises and oozes suspense from every sweaty, tropical pore. But Johan’s meet-cute and romance with Arumi puncture the film’s aura. They also wreck the on-screen family’s delicate emotional balance, while the young woman’s delightful independence somehow falls apart as she is reduced to a victim and a cipher.
Though the screenplay has a few flaws, Crocodile Tears is boosted by nuanced performances from its stars. Mahardika’s performance convincingly embodies the fury and uncertainty of Johan’s stunted emotional growth, but Anita’s channeling of the neurotic mother is the terrifying highlight of the film, as she constantly shifts gears between her character’s daytime working-class-mom persona and her pent-up and traumatised-widow nocturnal version.
Director, screenplay: Tumpal Tampubolon
Cast: Yusuf Mahardika, Marissa Anita, Zulfa Maharani
Producers: Mandy Marahimin, Anthony Chen, Claire Lajoumard, Yi Peng Teoh, Christophe Lafont, Harry Flöter, Jörg Siepmann
Cinematography: Teck Siang Lim
Editors: Jasmine Ng Kin Kia, Kelvin Nugroho
Production designer: Jafar Shiddiq
Costume designer: Hagai Pakan
Music: Kin Leonn
Sound designer: Roman Dymny
Production companies: Talamedia in association with Acrobates Films, Giraffe Pictures PTE LTD, Poetik Film, 2Pilots Filmproduction GmbH
World sales: Cercamon
Venue: Singapore International Film Festival (Competition)
In Indonesian
98 minutes
