Postcards From The Zoo

Edwin's Postcards From The Zoo (Indonesia, 2012) - A Jakarta zoo is the setting for a slow and dreamy magical realist romance in Indonesian filmmaker Edwin’s follow-up to his well-received 2009 debut Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly. Sweet and playful as a baby monkey, but with the lumbering pace of a hippo, the film has shades of both Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang (particularly Monrak Transistor) and Japanese manga guru Hayao Miyazaki (particularly Spirited Away) – in fact it feels a little as if the former had adapted and directed a script by the latter. Cinematic poetry of this nature is often a slow-build affair, and for much of its running time Postcards From The Zoo is one of those odd viewing experiences that bores and fascinates at the same time. The patient, though, will be rewarded by what is in the end an unclassifiable work of striking originality. 2012BERic, 2012BUS, 23.502012TRI. RATING: 8