SELAMAT PAGI CINTA AND IT’S `YOUNG’ LOVE.

SELAMAT PAGI CINTA AND IT’S `YOUNG’ LOVE.

Selamat Pagi Cinta (2008) or should I translate it as Good Moring My Dear Love, is a love story constructed from a point of view of the youngs’. Tell a story of 2 sad ending loves. First, the love diary of Azam, a university student who has to let go of his newly cherish love for marrying another man. Second, the love story of Julia’s. She has lost her love when her newly wed husband dies from a deadly disease. Selamat Pagi Cinta (SPC), outlines a simple storyline but carries a certain depth as we distinguish the issues that lay beneath the text.

The love diary of Azam, centre on a cliché love story: the forbidden love between classes but not as tragic as it is normally seen. Thus, Azam who is actually already `give up’ the fight since he first sees Suci’s big mansion, takes the relationship in a slow pace. It is this momentum that forms a lack in its dramatic drives. Hence at the end we could not manage to synchronise with Azam’s frustration emotion of his shattered love.

To a certain degree, Azam’s `non-fighter’ characteristics are clearly explain by the director indications through his violin and his obsession in literature especially poem. As we seen later in the film, his `fighting weapon’ for his love is just merely his owned composed song of his tragic love. Thus, he plays the song at an empty university’s theatre hall. All we can hear is just the melody of his tragic song resonates loudly throughout the hall, as Suci searches for him in tears. Later we see Azam’s hand sticking down into the frame while holding his violin, when the song ends, behind the stage curtain: as the frame foreground. While Suci who is sitting on a chair cries due to her shattered love: as the frame background.

The positioning of the characters and the frame mise-en-scene does signify the characters’ lost for their fight. But, initially there is no `real’ love story to begin with. Only a story of 2 friends who are starting to nurture their relationship as to establish a second – stage relationship: love, as Azam explains to his grandfather ‘I really like this girl but that doesn’t count as love’.

Nonetheless, Azam’s issues in SPC are more than as what it seen. It is also tells the story of an orphanage who lives with his sick grandfather who has been diagnosis as kidney dysfunction patient. Azam also works part-time at a restaurant as to generate  income for his studies. Later he has to stop his studies and work full-time since his grandfather is admitted into the hospital. It is this `weaknesses’ that triggers a sympathetic emotion for Azam from the audience.  They serve as a reflection of an ordinary phenomenon among audience. Obviously, Azam’s background story serves a certain weight for his side of story rather than his ` sad love story’ in SPC.

If now we turn to another love story in SPC. The story of Julia’s sad ending love. For me, it is this story that forms a total weight in SPC. The story centres on Julia and Ilham only. No parents are involved as commonly seen. This representation identifies the world of Julia and Ilham. Close up on their immature action: action of the young’s, and the serious and `mature’ risks which they have to burden later.

Taking this point further, we learn that Ilham and Julia decision to wed is base on coin flipping. Taking for granted the serious life of marriage, for Ilham, Julia is meant from him since they accidently meet twice in front of the same bookstore in a day. Their marriage life is blessed with love and happiness but later it shattered when Ilham dies of `unknown’ deadly disease.

Clearly in Julia’s story, the transformation of Ilham’s character of before and after he is told of his deadly disease is not clearly illustrate. Thus, might be because of it is told from Julia’s point of view: as she express to Ilham who is lying unconsciously on the hospital bed that `we tell everything to each other. I thought we are best friend, Ilham. But when you are in pain I did not know’

Noteworthy, Julia’s story in SPC has no background story as we saw in Azams’, since as I mentioned earlier it is the story of Julia’s and Ilham’s `loves.  It main focus centres on Julia and Ilham life. Thus, this method of representation is capable of luring the audience sympathetic emotions for Julia’s simple story.

Indeed the emphasising on Julia’s love technique manages to detail out her every day routine such as `at the table routine’. This routine functions as a nostalgic element for Julia and us, as we observed later in the film.  It is this nostalgic element that construct as the depth of Julia’s love story: as such the album and the video memory of them.

Though the film uses the first person storytelling method but the technique of Azam’s and Julia’s storytelling are different: the former - `wide’ storytelling, the latter - `close-up’ storytelling, to a certain extent these storytelling techniques manage to put forward their main issue: their sad love stories in a different angle. Indeed, in this method –the first person storytelling technique- capable of securing them as `the innocent one’. For example, the choice of the `wide’ storytelling of Azam’s story is for us to observed that it is not his fault that Suci decides to choose another man. Since he has other responsibilities which are more important to attend: his grandfather and his part-time work, as he comes from not so wealthy background. Later, the choice of `close-up’ storytelling for Julia’s story is for us to observed that it is not Julia’s fault for to wed early and as we learned she is forced to agree on the flipping coin method.

In brief, SPC put forward the issues of  a`tragic love’. We are place to observed the viewpoint of the young’s perspective of  the definition of love, which everything seem simple and easy but does carries a heavy consequences.