Postcards from the Zoo

I saw this film at the Berlinale film festival 2012, as part of the official Competition section. The synopsis as published by the film festival, prepared us that we would see two versions of the same Lana: first as a very young girl, and later as a young woman.

The film started with Lina as a very young girl, wandering through the woods, watching animals and their caretakers. She called for her father in the beginning, but we never saw someone acting as her father. She had to find her own way, so it seemed, in this environment, left to her fantasies.

Suddenly, without an indication that time jumped forward, Lina re-appears as a grown up woman. We see her becoming an assistant for a magician dressed as a cowboy, who suddenly and magically disappears from her life. Later on we see her at work as a masseuse at a spa.

As a bonus we got a crash course in zoology and insights in zoo internals, though I'm unsure it was intentional to educate us. While many different animals were shown, the giraffe seems to be Lana's main focus. Anyway, we now know more about giraffes than we'll ever need to know.

Nothing much happens in the sense of a plot, yet we were treated on nice views on animals, the flora in a zoo, and the playgrounds for children's entertainment. And the magician/cowboy was a nice touch to have him included in the scenario, providing for a mini-story within the film. Same, to a lesser degree, can be said about her job as a masseuse. For that reason, this film was not boring to sit through. Nevertheless, I had expected more of a dramatic development, given the announcement text. Don't expect a coherent story with head and tail; you won't get any.

This hard to categorise curio from Indonesia starts as a story about a little girl called Lana who was abandoned at a zoo and has spent all her life living there amongst zoo workers, assorted homeless people and, of course, the animals.

At first, it plays as a cross between documentary and surrealist fantasy. The everyday activities at the zoo are accompanied by narration which ruminates on the lifestyles of different animals, including humans "who come to look" and humans "who don't want to be seen". Title cards flash up every so often with definitions of conservation phrases such "endemic", "ex-situ" and "re-introduction". These take on new meaning in the second half, where the story moves into much darker territory. Lana, now grown up, falls for an enigmatic magician dressed as a cowboy. Their romance takes her out of the zoo for the first time and leads her to the brothel where she was abandoned at the age of 3. She is taken in and taught the art of entertaining clients, especially how to keep them interested for long enough that they book extra sessions. Scenes of animals being tended to and visitors watching them are juxtaposed with the pampering rituals in the massage parlour and men viewing girls through a spy hole. The meaning is clear, we are all trapped in a zoo of some kind.

Lana's graceful demeanour and inner strength give her a special affinity with the zoo's lone giraffe, who we learn much about. Other scene stealing animals include a hippo having its teeth cleaned, and, outside of the zoo, the bizarre spectacle of a tame monkey wearing mask made out of a dolls head.

The ethereal cinematography and ponderous pacing lend the film a dreamlike, otherworldly quality, as we the audience observe the natural phenomena of childlike wonder giving way to the "adapt or die" realities of adulthood.