Mendadak Dangdut

Well......no. I am not into dangdut, despite I spent quite a fair bit of time watching Indo Pek nowadays, I still could not find it in my heart to like the soul of Indonesia's music, not a single beat.

Its actually a title of a movie I watched just now. I must admit, hands down, they made film waayyyy better than our local producers. Its a story of two sisters, Petris, the younger one is a pop rock star with an attitude, managed by her older sister, Yulia, very patient and seems to handle Petris very well. One fine day they were on the way to go back home after a radio show. As usual Yulia's boyfriend pick them up by driving Petris's car. She insist that Yulia drives back while Gary moves to the back. Yulia took a shortcut, and stumbled into a roadblock, just meters away from the police, Gary jumped out of car. Confused, the two sisters went ahead and stopped at the roadblock. Little did they know Gary left a bag with 5kg of heroins in it.

They were busted but somehow they managed to run away during a stop for a toilet break. They ran towards nearby 'slum' area, and what a run without a chase right? The running scene was real, those two can really run. Somehow they stumbled upon two people arguing on a dangdut show. Crowds were yelling but the female dangdut singer left the musician after her demand for payment rise has been rejected.

Yulia saw the opportunity, she talked Petris into singing dangdut, by this time both are fugitive with nothing on them, they are both tired, hungry and has no place to stay. So like it or not Petris agreed to play along. I can see that she was reeeaaaallllllyyyyy struggling to 'feel' dangdut. Masa sih penyanyi rock disuruh nyanyi dangdut, mana bisa dong, konflik tau ngak jiwanya..!!

In order to survive, Petris was transformed to a dangdut singer, the musician even took the effort to get help from a dangdut living legend to teach Petris how to sing dangdut. They blended in the society, from a superstar frequently made appearance in the MTV, Petris now struts her stuff in front of a group of people that she called 'preman'. Few incident happen that somehow changes Petris's view on the world and why dangdut sngers sang the way they are. The film portrays the street life of the low income group in Jakarta, their struggles and basically their fight for survival. Did Petris took a 180 and stick with dangdut? What about the drug trafficking charges? Would they continue living in the slum? While the storyline might be predictable, the way the stories were told makes a difference. At times it was hilarious and some other time I would be crying with them. I like it :)

* I wish we have producers in Malaysia that would make this kind of light movies and yet full of messages.