For a few tens of thousands of rupiah in 2003, Indonesian cinemagoers could escape into fantasy. Not Middle Earth nor the Matrix, but somewhere far more seductive, a Jakarta unburdened by financial anxiety. Nia Dinata’s “Arisan!” offers voyeuristic access to the world of Jakarta’s super-rich, functioning for lower-middle-class audiences as pure escapism, and a two-hour flight to a universe where a hundred dollars means next to nothing.
Yet beneath its glossy surface, “Arisan!” commits a fundamental cinematic failure. While claiming to satirize elite superficiality, it employs methods equally shallow. In the end, Dinata and screenwriter Joko Anwar end up mocking their own reflection.
Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems
“Arisan!” opens on Jakarta’s chaotic streets: blaring horns, roaring bajaj, and urban tumult. Credits roll over screen-printed shirts, street musicians’ drums, the visual debris of daily life. But this gritty introduction proves deceptive. Once inside the characters’ world, chaos evaporates. What remains are air-conditioned silence, minimalist spaces drowning in whitespace, and Cellini sofas worth more than most viewers’ homes. We follow three upper-class friends (Meimei, Sakti, and Andien), each concealing major secrets (infertility, homosexuality, marital collapse) behind forced smiles at their arisan gatherings, where showing off and gossip reign supreme.
Meimei: Intellectuality as Costume
“Compared to those arisan ladies, you’re the most intellectual,” Andien tells Meimei. This assessment stems not from discussions of books or ideas but purely from appearance. Meimei (Cut Mini Theo) performs as a “modern career woman” through superficial markers. She dons collared shirts signalling white-collar status and a monochrome palette versus garish colors.
Her intellectuality amounts to a facade, props and costumes without substance. When she switches to pink after her husband leaves, the film announces through her subordinate, “Maybe her true self is coming out.” The film’s “deepest” character never exceeds her wardrobe choices.
More tellingly, Meimei mirrors director Nia Dinata herself. As the sole character viewing the arisan ladies with ironic detachment, she serves as the director’s attempt at self-separation from her critique’s target. “Her youth was burden-free,” Andien notes, confirming Meimei’s inherited privilege. She remains a product of the system she claims to transcend, distinguished only by button-downs instead of floral prints.
Sakti: Psychological Crisis as Ultimate Luxury
“Electricity, telephone, household matters. Sakti handles everything,” his mother announces. This line exposes the film’s core privilege, where problems are purely psychological rather than material. Sakti (Tora Sudiro) wrestles with sexual identity yet faces no meaningful external obstacles. No concrete religious pressure. No real social consequences. Even family appears as an abstract threat rather than a structural barrier.
When Sakti finally “becomes himself” by adopting gay slang at the film’s resolution, the film frames it as a personal triumph. No economic fallout, and his mansion remains. Only his psychological interior shifts; his home’s interior stays intact. This represents invisible privilege, the luxury of an identity crisis without livelihood concerns. Sakti’s struggle is universally human, yet he experiences it in its most sterilized form.
Andien: Class Mobility Shattering Illusion
Andien (Aida Nurmala) alone demonstrates class mobility. Born outside wealth, she married her boss into the one percent. This revelation should rupture the film’s “beautiful people, beautiful problems” illusion. Instead, Andien becomes a punchline. She is the rich “airhead” flaunting her Croco bag and Jaguar. The dialogue mocks her as tacky and shallow. But how does she differ from Meimei? Both define themselves through consumption. The distinction lies purely in taste. Andien chooses excessive canopies and loud colors, yet Meimei opts for Scandinavian minimalism. This difference barely transcends interior design catalogue preferences.
When Cinematography Becomes Advertorial
Watching “Arisan!” feels like flipping through an animated Vogue magazine. Every frame screams advertorial. Production design laboriously showcases each character’s taste but never achieves cinematic language. It merely produces inventory lists. Dinata’s camera crawls through these spaces, granting audiences time to price every object. This isn’t an expressive mise-en-scène but an Architectural Digest catalogue.
The film obsesses over brand-dropping: Croco bags, Jaguars, Louis Vuitton card holders, custom car plates reading B 9 XY. These mentions aren’t incidental. They constitute the class language characters use for self-definition. When Andien explains the party dress code (“Polkadot, you know. Haute couture!”), When arisan ladies discuss diamonds at the table, or when characters casually note “yoga is the best,” all function as class signifiers. Yet rather than wielding this language to dismantle class systems, the film savors it. The camera gazes at luxury objects not with irony or critical distance but with fervent desire.
Consider the sharp contrast with Jacques Tati’s “PlayTime.” Tati doesn’t merely record grandeur. He constructs massive sets, transforming Paris into a labyrinth of uniform, sterile glass skyscrapers. Where “Arisan!” haphazardly scatters expensive objects for glamour’s sake, “PlayTime” deploys production design as cinematic language satirizing cultural homogenization. Long shots emphasize human insignificance amid a concrete jungle. If “Arisan!“‘s cinematic language invites us to price-check while socializing in superficial Jakarta, “PlayTime“‘s film form encourages laughter at modern humanity’s alienation in impersonal Paris.
Mistrusting Audience Intelligence
“Arisan!”‘s most glaring failure is refusing to trust viewer intelligence. The film rejects subtext. Every emotion requires a dialogue explanation. Every conflict gets verbalized. Every symbol receives labels.
Sakti struggles with sexuality? He states directly: “I’m confused about myself.” Meimei feels pressured by motherhood expectations? Dialogue explains exhaustively. Conflict between authenticity and conformity? Characters debate verbally, complete with pro-con arguments. One of the film’s most embarrassing moments is when a magazine titled “GAY” sits prominently in the foreground when Sakti’s cousin discovers his orientation.
Nearly all dialogue advances the plot or explains feelings while neglecting subtext. When a character observes, “Sometimes things are bought just to be seen, not used,” we receive explicit meta-commentary on consumerism rather than demonstration through behavior. Similarly, when “Being gay is considered normal now” meets “Who says?” and “Well, my customs,” the modernity-versus-tradition conflict reduces to dialogue back-and-forth, never internalized through actions or choices.
Consider New Order cinema through the lens of Sjumandjaja or Chaerul Umam. Under censorship pressure, they discovered methods for smuggling critique. Sjumandjaja’s “Bukan Sandiwara” exposes Indonesian society’s awkwardness with modernity through a couple who intellectually embrace technology, yet remain culturally tethered to traditional “lineage” obsessions. This tension manifests through anxious subtext. Chaerul Umam’s “Kejarlah Daku… Kau Kutangkap” employs clever caricature that satirizes era rigidity through “gender war” comedy wrapped in absurd yet entertaining dialogue. Conversely, “Arisan!” (born in post-Reformation freedom) chooses dullness, cramming information explicitly as if distrusting audiences’ ability to read unspoken conflict.
Half-Hearted Class Critique
Here lies “Arisan!“‘s greatest paradox: does it critique Jakarta’s elite or celebrate them? Arisan, as a social institution, represents mutual aid. This film subverts it into a luxury exhibition, social validation, and cruel gossip. The arisan ladies appear as tacky and superficial creatures obsessed with brands and status.
This subversion grows tragic alongside rural Indonesian reality. In West Java’s Kemang Village, arisan for lower-class communities isn’t for wealth-flaunting but a survival mechanism.1. Amid limited banking access due to geography, arisan functions as an emergency savings cooperative. Collected funds facilitate education costs, emergency healthcare, and small-scale agricultural capital. For them, arisan provides safety nets for urgent economic problems. Yet in “Arisan!“‘s universe, this solidarity mechanism gets hijacked. “She just finished that cultural gallery in Kemang!” Andien exclaims while introducing Meimei. Same Kemang, different worlds. The film’s Kemang symbolizes elite prestige, but the real Kemang Village witnesses mothers battling poverty.
Dinata and Anwar clearly want us to laugh at arisan ladies like Andien. But from which position? As critics recognizing class system absurdity? Or as fellow upper-class members feeling more “sophisticated” than these women? It satirizes brand obsession and social hypocrisy, yet its camera caresses luxury objects lovingly. This visual approach signals admiration over critique.
Only one moment truly disrupts privilege: the police station scene. Suddenly, cameras abandon luxury home sterility for chaos. Crude language shatters the polite decorum maintained throughout the film. Here, for once, we glimpse “other people,” the lower class. In one corner, a pregnant woman contrasts with infertile Meimei. This rare moment suggests awareness of existence beyond elite South Jakarta. Unfortunately, it arrives too late. The police station becomes zoo-like, a strange place worth brief visits but not understanding.
Released in 2003 (five years post-Reformation), “Arisan!” inhabits a vacuum. No political reality references. No traces of the recently passed economic crisis. This world exists sterile, isolated in Jakarta’s ivory tower. This represents a political choice despite claims of apoliticism. By refusing political discussion, the film speaks volumes by saying super-rich lives can and should exist separately from the majority social reality. Such depoliticization reduces structural problems to individual psychological matters.
A Mirror Reflecting Only Itself
“Arisan!” stands as a post-Reformation Indonesian cinema monument. It is a film with a substantial budget, high production values, and complete creative freedom that nevertheless fails to create anything meaningful.
For lower-middle-class audiences, this might function as wet dream escapism, a two-hour flick to experience a world without financial burden. And nothing wrong with escapism. But “Arisan!” pretends to be more. It pretends to care about characters who are merely mannequins donning designer clothes. It attempts to critique its own elite through pinches too gentle, as if fearing marks on expensively treated skin. Money bought quality cameras, famous actors, and luxurious sets. But it couldn’t buy depth. Most crucially, “Arisan!” couldn’t buy the courage to truly bite the hand that feeds.
For critical audiences seeking substance behind visual lavishness, “Arisan!” proves nightmarish. It is evidence that post-Reformation cinema, supposedly free, chooses golden cage confinement and enjoys views from inside.
References
1 “Factors Influencing Participation and Credit Constraints of a Financial Self-Help Group in a Remote Rural Area: The Case of ROSCA and ASCRA in Kemang Village West Java”, Journal of Applied Sciences 9 (11): 2067-2077, 2009
This article was written and published as part of “BUKAN SANDIWARA” KRITIK! Film Criticism & Curatorial Lab by Forum Lenteng.
Read the Bahasa Indonesia version of this article HERE
