Double feature: Bread Dream (2012) / Teluki (2013)

directed by Abdul Zainidi
Brunei
13 minutes / 9 minutes
4 out of 5 stars collectively
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I don't usually do this- "this" being review short films- but since there aren't too many films from Brunei available, I wanted to give these two some more recognition.

Bread Dream is the longer one, with Abdul Zainidi also playing the title role (I believe?) of a young man at that point in his life where his family becomes very demanding about his need to get a job and preferably also get married. Most of the film deals, whether directly or through metaphor, with the psychological stress of being a young adult who doesn't want to pursue the path one's family would have one be on, but it's not that simple. The director is apparently a fan of David Lynch and that comes out in Bread Dream's use of surreal imagery and what would appear to be total randomness- most notably a croissantphone. Which makes sense, if you think about it: You put a seashell to your ear, you hear the sea; you put a croissant to your ear, you hear a French person.

But the surreal imagery in this one seems to take after David Lynch in that it doesn't feel like it was put there because somebody thought "haha what if we had a talking croissant". It definitely feels like there was care taken in choosing what went where and when and why. I think I enjoyed this most of the two shorts.

Teluki is a story about a folkloric creature (called a Teluki) that takes and eats children. The fan response to it seems to be largely negative because apparently people can't get behind the fact that everyone has a different way of telling the story they want to tell and that way is not always filtered through a Hollywood studio with Matt Damon along for the ride.

Personally I love films like this where ghosts and other supernatural creatures don't look any different from humans, or I guess I should say that there's no aura around them suggesting they're anything but a human. The Teluki looks like a stooped-over, shambling old person in a black cloak that obscures their head and face, but otherwise it's perfectly corporeal, and this is my favorite way to depict anything paranormal. It's just like you and me, it has a physical component and is part of the world just like plants and animals and people, but because we're explicitly told that it is not a normal part of the physical world, we still believe it, even though our eyes tell us otherwise.

The short mostly seems to be viewed through the perspective of the child who's been taken, which is interesting. We see him as he does something strange with egg tarts (again, prepare for things to not always make sense) which appears to lead to the Teluki taking him. How this affects his family is briefly shown, and after he's taken he becomes a liminal being, but again, he still doesn't look any less like a normal human. I would love to see a full-length version of this or at least something longer than 9 minutes that explores these concepts but doesn't attempt to put shiny special effects on them.