'Api Cinta Antonio Blanco' despicts painter's life
'Api Cinta Antonio Blanco' despicts painter's life
By Tam Notosusanto
JAKARTA (JP): Don Antonio Blanco should be proud. Not only is he an artist in the league of Van Gogh, Dali and Picasso, but now -- like those legendary masters -- he has a film based on his life.
Api Cinta Antonio Blanco (Antonio Blanco's Flame of Love), an eight-part miniseries airing on ANteve every Tuesday since March 23, is the true account of how the Spanish painter arrived in Bali, fell in love with a local girl and became a life-long resident of the island.
Even though eight hours sounds more like a project of personal aggrandizement, the series proves otherwise. Blanco is not portrayed as a nice, well-mannered artist. He is a loud, self- centered, pig-headed man who also is an honest, passionate and romantic artist. In short, he is portrayed as a human being.
The filmmakers did the right thing by skipping Blanco's (played by Michael Pas) early years in various countries and beginning their film when he lands in Bali and begins his new life there. With help from locals, he makes himself comfortable in Ubud, where he sets up his humble shack of a studio and begins painting.
In Ubud he meets Ni Ronji (played by Ni Ketut Melati), a village girl whose raw beauty and mixture of warmth and hardheadedness drives him crazy. Blanco manages to persuade Ronji to become his model, and from that moment on she becomes his muse and later his wife.
Api Cinta Antonio Blanco naturally invites comparisons to other films about great painters such as Lust for Life (about Van Gogh), and films about the lives of Basquiat, Dali and Picasso. But unlike those films, Api Cinta is nowhere near the territory of bleak cinema.
Sure, Blanco has hardships: he has to strive to convince Rondji's family to let her be his model, he has to deal with Rondji's occasional mood swings whenever he is ready to pour himself onto the canvas and he has to constantly struggle to adapt to the values and traditions of Bali. But at no point in this film does Blanco get close to cutting off his ear or surrendering to drugs.
Director Rima Melati shows that a biographical movie about a painter need not be depressing. This movie shows that such films can be upbeat, inspiring, old-fashioned entertainment whose aim is to let the audience have a good time.
This series reminds us instead of cross-cultural films like Sayonara, Dances with Wolves and Witness, where two different cultures come together through the passionate love of two people from different worlds. This is the best Api Cinta has to offer: showing how two different value systems come face to face, clash with each other and eventually live in harmony.
A memorable scene portrays Blanco furiously attempting to chase away the villagers who come to help him build a house, unaware the villagers expect no payment for their efforts. He also has a hard time understanding why the Balinese prefer to forgive a local criminal rather than turn him over to the authorities and he is at odds with Ronji and her family over the raising of his and Ronji's child.
Screenwriter Putu Wijaya gives no clue that he is the Indonesian playwright best-known for his "theater of terror", giving us a tame and sober teleplay with sharp, clear, linear storytelling, free from experimentation.
Blanco's marriage to the Balinese culture comes out beautifully in Putu's subtle hands, even though the opening credits -- which clearly underestimate the audience's intelligence -- pound that point in, with "EAST & WEST" in uppercase letters splayed across the screen.
Putu does, however, become bogged down with the framing device which has the real Blanco and his wife reminiscing about their past -- segments which don't seem to fit anywhere in the film.
For those who yawn at the premise of East meeting West, the film's villain, I Lodra (Eko Noah), will keep the audience tuned in every Tuesday night at 8 p.m. with his jealous attempts to disrupt the happiness of Blanco and Rondji. And the thrill of seeing a portrayal of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, may spark the interest of channel-surfers (at least for episodes 3 and 4, in which the late president appears).
The director's spouse, Frans Tumbuan, plays this part, and although he seems a bit awkward in Sukarno's uniform, his resemblance to Indonesia's founding father is rather arresting.
The best aspect of this series is, of course, Michael Pas, the Belgian actor who breathes life into the title role. He finds a way to visualize the artist's ebullient eccentricity through his mastery of acting grammar.
His Blanco is a lovable, conceited artist, whose egocentric manner deserves a slap in the face (and in the last episode he finally gets one from a little girl). Ni Ketut Melati complements him with her tough but loyal Rondji.
Pas meets his match, however, in Kadek Suardana, who plays Rondji's father in a restrained but powerful performance. Suardana (who also wrote the series' award-winning score) looks like a simple, middle-aged man with a sheepish smile, but every time he walks into a scene, his presence commands attention and respect.
Pas and Suardana share the series' best dialog, and the scene in which Blanco persuades Rondji's father to let his daughter work for him is an exciting display of the beauty of acting.
Rima Melati's third outing as a director is quite an achievement. And although 1950s Indonesia in this series looks a lot like present-day Indonesia (save for the fancy period automobiles), overall, this is a nice piece of entertainment.
Amid all the other television series which make us feel bad about matters not even worth considering, Api Cinta Antonio Blanco is a welcome delight.