What's Up with Love?

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What's Up with Love?

Directed by	Rudy Soedjarwo
Produced by	Mira Lesmana Riri Riza
Written by	Jujur Prananto Prima Rusdi
Starring	Dian Sastrowardoyo Nicholas Saputra Titi Kamal
Distributed by	Miles Productions
Release date(s)	8 February 2002
Running time	112 min
Language	Indonesian
Budget	~ Rp 4 billion
IMDb profile

What's Up with Love? (Indonesian: Ada Apa dengan Cinta?) is a 2002 Indonesian film directed by Rudy Soedjarwo. The Indonesian title is actually an untranslatable word play, as Cinta (the Indonesian word for "love") is actually the name of the main character.

1 Plot
2 Analysis
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Cinta is a popular teenage girl living a comfortable lifestyle, surrounded by a group of faithful friends, caring and supportive parents who are wealthy and happily married, giftedness and accomplishments, and the most popular boy in school having the hots for her. The story begins with Cinta and her four best friends crying on each other's shoulder for Alya, who suffered domestic abuse. Cinta recites the group's pledge to the buku curhat (a kind of diary/scrapbook the five girls share) that all problems any one of them is going through is to be shared with all, thus illustrating the closeness of their friendship.

Cinta and her four best friends are also the editors of the school bulletin board. Cinta is a reputable school poet, and in her final year of high school submits a beautiful poem to the yearly poetry contest, as she always had. While the crowd was cheering expectantly for Cinta to win the contest yet again, the grand prize is, to their surprise, awarded to Rangga. The crowd is even more gobsmacked when Rangga, rather than proudly receiving his prize on the podium, took offence and retreated to his lonely hiding place.

As a contrast, Rangga is a character whose name is rarely heard of in the school, whose best friend is the school janitor, lives in a lower middle-class neighbourhood with his former politician single father Yusrizal, dodging bomb threats periodically. Rangga's hurts include his parents' bitter divorce caused by Yusrizal's disengagement from the government office for exposing government corruption.

While being careful not to show it, Cinta is somewhat jealous of Rangga's unexpected victory. This jealousy as well as public curiosity leads Cinta to search for Rangga and request an interview for the bulletin. Rangga immediately detected the subtle insincerity in Cinta's congratulations and replied with a cold "I don't need your congratulations," and left. What Cinta perceived as Rangga's arrogance left Cinta rather irritated for some time. As it turned out, Rangga never entered his poem for the contest; it was submitted on his behalf by the school janitor. Cinta started finding herself admiring Rangga's poetry. The two began to keep in touch regularly due to a shared interest in rare classical Indonesian literature, and although constantly coloured with quarells and arguments, a friendship blossomed between the two. However, fear and pride prevented Cinta and Rangga to admit that they liked each other and that their friendship was evolving into something romantic.

Cinta and Rangga's secret friendship causes dramatic changes in Cinta's behaviour, thus resulting in problems with Cinta's group of girl friends. Rangga is not exempt from the consequences either; along with a few friends, popular rich boy Borné who had been trying to woo Cinta into a relationship corners up Rangga and beats him up. One day, a date with Rangga makes Cinta ignore a desperate phone call from Alya. This produces a tragic consequence and a crisis of trust among the five friends. Cinta's guilt and shame at herself causes her to lash out at Rangga and jeopardise their friendship. The question is, will the crisis ever be solved, and will Rangga and Cinta get back together? What's up with Cinta?

[edit] Analysis

The adventure of What's Up with Love? lies in the question of whether damages caused by the "forbidden romance" were reversible, and whether it was possible for Cinta to remain faithful to her girlfriends without losing Rangga. The film is coloured with Indonesian mainstream as well as sidestream values, elements of classical culture and politics, real issues encountered in teen life, and unique adventures and surprises. It is, however, artistically packaged in a format that is watcher-friendly to an audience.

[edit] Trivia

What's Up with Love? raised censorship controversies among conservative Muslims in Indonesia, being the first Indonesian teen movie that featured a kissing scene.
Shortly after its success, What's Up with Love? was adapted into a TV series version. However, the cast of the TV series is not the same people who played the film. When asked about his opinion on the TV series' casting on Prambors radio in 2003, Saputra expressly stated, "Rangga again? I'm bored (with playing him) already by now!"
A parody of a could-be scene in the movie, personally played by Saputra and Sastrowardoyo, was made into a commercial for a popular mall in Jakarta called Plaza Senayan.
The movie is known as Beautiful Days in Japan.