Versatile Malaysian director Woo Ming Jin (The Tiger Factory, Woman on Fire Looks for Water) returns to the international festival scene with Stone Turtle, an intriguing if not always successful feminist revenge tale weaving together folklore, animation and the building blocks through which stories are told. Largely set on a spare Malaysian island where an undocumented Indonesian woman lives by illicitly selling turtle eggs, the film toys with narrative construction as the protagonist seeks to punish the man who brought tragedy to her family. Nice to look at and with a strong central narrative, Stone Turtle doesn’t quite live up to its ambitions but could be a worthwhile choice for programmers seeking southeast Asian fare.
Sometime in the past, Zahara (Samara Abigail) saw her father stone her sister (Maisyarah Mazlan) to death for “dishonoring the family.” In consequence she grabbed her sister’s child and fled, ending up on Stone Turtle Island with several other women who’ve also escaped the world they came from. Now that Zahara’s niece Nika (Samara Kenzo) is ten, she wants to register her for school, but the inflexible registrar (Amerul Affendi) won’t allow the paperwork to be submitted since neither Zahara nor Nika have residency documents.
One day Samad (Bront Palarae) arrives on the island, posing as a scientist in search of endangered leatherback turtles. Since the women on the island eke out an existence by selling their lucrative eggs, they see him as an intruder, but Zahara knows he’s no scientist (to be honest, so does the audience, instantly). What ensues is a game between the two, as she pretends to show where the eggs can be found but instead leads him into a trap.
Woo excels in capturing the atmosphere of the island, its pristine sands and rocky coves together with the thick humidity that makes skin glisten and clothes stick to bodies. Less successful is the way he tries to blend in a folkloristic ritual in which Zahara dons special garb and, with the other island women in attendance, dances around Samad’s prone body. While beautifully shot, the scene feels too much like a more tasteful update of the sort of “women dancing over the doomed man” silliness featured in Queen of Outer Space and movies of that ilk. There’s no campiness here, but even inadvertently evoking such images works against Woo’s genuinely feminist aims.
More intriguing is the way he keeps resetting the cat-and-mouse game Zahara and Samad play, repeating with slight variations the way she traps him. The conceit mirrors oral storytelling in how small changes are made each time a tale is recounted, as if Woo is looking to claim a time-honored Malaysian way of spinning a narrative. Conceptually sound, the device needs a stronger vehicle to completely work, but the script’s engagement with how stories are told and consumed – Nika has no interest in reading anything other than Ms. Marvel comics whereas Zahara has an old book of traditional folktales – is the film’s strong suit.
On its own, the beautifully animated story of a female turtle’s quest to counter a spell that’s turned her mate to stone is a highlight, lovingly drawn by Paul Williams, and yet its depressing denouement, implying that love is, after all, evanescent, doesn’t meld well with the film’s main theme where love, apart from Zahara’s for Nika, is absent. Throughout Stone Turtle there’s a sense that Woo’s desire to weave in traditional stories hasn’t been fully calibrated with the main narrative, although each element works well on its own, such as a largely implied interaction between the living and the dead. “I’d rather be alive on an island of ghosts than be a ghost in the land of the living” Zahara tells Samad, and at the very end a character, Mia (Alison Khor), appears who embodies that concept, yet like much else here, development is uneven. Kong Pahurak’s excellent, richly visualized cinematography does much to hold it all together.
Director: Woo Ming Jin
Screenplay: Woo Ming Jin, Neesa Jamal, Deo Mahameru
Cast: Asmara Abigail, Bront Palarae, Samara Kenzo, Amerul Affendi, Alison Khor, Mohd Zulfitri Bin Zambri, Maisyarah Mazlan, Mazlan Yussof, Rosmaimi Hussin, Ryea Ho, Wan Nur Iman Shuhadah Wan Abdul
Producers: Edmund Yeo, Woo Ming Jin
Co-producers: Cheng Thim Kian, Yulia Evina Bhara
Cinematography: Kong Pahurak
Production designers: Liew Seng Tat
Costume designer: Ryea Ho
Editing: Edmund Yeo, Benjamin Mirguet
Music: Phil Chapavich
Sound: Chalermrat Kaweewattana, Tan Mei Juan
Animation: Paul Williams
Production company: Greenlight Pictures (Malaysia), KawanKawan Media (Indonesia)
World sales: Parallax Films
Venue: Locarno (International competition)
In Malay, Indonesian, Mandarin
91 minutes
