La Luna

“God is watching”, remind the posters all around Kampong Bras Basah, a small village governed by the severe religious authority of Tok Hassan. Under the scholar’s strict supervision, fashion magazines are manually censored, sermons are purged of humour and teenage art is deemed a matter of police concern. But the enduring order of Tok Hassan’s moral domain is threatened when Hanie, a modern entrepreneur from Kuala Lumpur, comes to the village to open an upscale lingerie store. 

The eternal battle between tradition and modernity gets a sexy twist in M. Raihan Halim’s rip-roaring comedy La Luna. Propelled by an endearing ensemble, the film playfully pits religious orthodoxy against liberal values, imagining in the process a community rediscovering its joy for life. Hanie envisions her eponymous store not just as a women-only place outside the reach of Tok Hassan’s arbitrary mandates, but also as a safe space that the village women can turn to when things get rough.

Halim’s film mobilises the conventions of screen comedy with finesse, understanding the value of selective exaggeration and dosings of emotion. Pleasing, progressive and provocative, La Luna offers an uplifting work with a wide appeal and a critical edge.

– Srikanth Srinivasan