Parts of the Heart

In eight funny/sad chapters, Paul Agusta traces the life story of Peter, a gay man in Jakarta. There may be some elements of autobiography involved (that embarrassing phase Peter goes through as a self-pitying Goth teenager?), but the episodes are chosen primarily to demonstrate how emotional attachments shape character. We start, of course, with a boyhood crush in the Scouts, and then advance rapidly through the loss of virginity with a classmate to the first experiences of loss and break-up. By the time he reaches middle-age, Peter has married his boyfriend (in Europe) and is beginning to find long-term relationships a bit stale. He opens a coffee-shop and flirts with a young customer… Peter is played by eight different actors (by the great Joko Anwar in the episode "The Couch and the Cat," which explores the "seven-year-itch" syndrome), but the film feels organic and integral. One reason it feels so unified is that it’s so smartly shot and cut: the style is clean, cool and unaffected. Another reason is that it’s all so accurately observed and wry: self-awareness is rarely this amusing.

— Tony Rayns