Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly

Yesterday I got on a free month-long trial of the Mubi service, which I find to be quite a neat idea: it offers up a curated selection of films, 1 new every day, which stays available for 30 days. The selection is on the arty side, which is something I haven’t been consuming a lot of late, but used to, and so something like this is a great way to be guided through some interesting movies to watch. The first one I watched was a 2008 Indonesian film called Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly. I used to be obsessed with Asian cinema before I moved to Asia, and loved catching titles at festivals like Fantasia and the Montreal World Film Festival, as well as at an awesome video rental shop called La Boîte Noire. But yes, this movie, it’s… interesting. It’s a rather dark comedy without much of a narrative, more a compilation of sketches that revolve around a few characters. It’s slow, and for some reason, there are countless scenes with characters singing Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” I’m still not sure how much I enjoyed it, but I don’t regret watching it.