Before, Now & Then Review

When one survives unspeakable violence to find safety and prosperity on the other side, does one have a duty to maintain allegiance to those who provided it for you? How about if that source of safety, prosperity, and comfort is your spouse – a much older man – who loves you in his own way? What about if you learn that he is cheating on you with a younger woman? Those are the baseline questions asked within Before, Now & Then, a gorgeous, complex, and wonderfully melancholy film from Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini. But from those starting questions spawn many more – and a number of complicated answers that ring so true to life and love as we see it.

Before, Now & Then begins with Nana (the exquisite Happy Salma) escaping from anticommunist militants with her sister and her infant. The pair believe their father and Nana’s husband have been murdered and this is their only chance to escape their own forced marriages to those same men who killed those they loved – the Before of the title. In present day, Nana has remarried to the much older, but kind, plantation owner Darga, and given birth to four more children. Her life is a series of brief visits with her youngest daughter and son, taking care of things on the plantation, and making dinner for the family each night. When she realizes that Darga has taken a mistress, her world is thrown off balance. When she discovers it to be Ino, a butcher in the town, she chooses to simply accept the situation rather than fight against it – a necessary step to avoid the pointed barbs of the local women’s circle who already look down on her for her past.

As the film unfolds, Nana discovers that Ino (played with a youthful calm by Laura Basuki) isn’t the rival she imagined her to be. Rather, she becomes a close friend and confident (just how close is up for interpretation, as their relationship certainly has Sapphic overtones, but due to the strict censorship laws in Indonesia, it can absolutely be read as a close female friendship only). She is the only person in the film to make Nana laugh, to get her to open up and breathe rather than live in fear of both her past and present uncertainty. But, perhaps most crucially, Ino teaches Nana that it’s alright for her to want things for herself – to crave a freedom from the structure of being the wife and mother at home. With Ino, Nana isn’t afraid to leap from a cliff, both literally and figuratively.

Early in the film, Nana tells her daughter that women have many secrets and they keep them in their hair – which is why it must remain long and tied up in a bun each day. But with Ino, Nana begins to understand that stifling herself is not necessary to live the full life she craves. Of course, with that new understanding come greater and more complex questions and problems, but it’s the recognition of the desire to live outside the structure dictated by society at large that is key to Nana’s fulfillment of her character.

We see this realization play out in Salma’s performance – her face is incredible to watch, each slight hitting her brow, the slow return of joy behind her eyes, and the deep trust in her entire body that appears when Ino and her are alone. If I had one wish from the film it would be that we were granted more time with just the pair of Nana and Ino, deepening their close friendship even more. But, as with all relationships, there comes a time when Nana must take flight on her own, taking the lessons she’s learned from Ino with her. It’s all too rare still to see deep female relationships represented on screen without a familial or romantic quality. With Before, Now & Then, we’re granted this look at how fulfilling such relationships can be and just how necessary they are to allow women to grow. It’s a gorgeous film and one that is highly rewarding to watch.

Before, Now & Then was screened at the 58th Annual Chicago Film Festival.