A Cringe-Filled Indonesian Romance That Tries Too Hard T3o Be Heartfelt

Promised Hearts, an Indonesian melodrama streaming on Netflix, is so shallow and unvarnished, it feels like an amateur home movie made by lovestruck teenagers.

There is an air of embroidered naïveté about the presentation. It is a product of an inexperienced mind, pretending to know more about relationships than it actually does. Seen as a parable on puppy love (posing as something far more intense), Promised Hearts just about passes muster—although one needs to brace oneself for the cringe benefits.

In many ways, Promised Hearts seems like a dumbed-down, over-sweetened version of the captivating Korean series When Life Gives You Tangerines.

The fluffy, frequently annoying film is about an economically challenged girl, Niyala (Beby Tsabina), who grows up in a well-to-do family with the family’s son, Faiq (Deva Mahenra)—à la Maine Pyar Kiya. But here, they don’t feel like a couple, but siblings, which actually makes some sense. I always found the Prem-Suman equation in Maine Pyar Kiya a bit dodgy.

Promised Hearts puts the young couple in a sibling-like axis and then extricates them from it through a series of plotting devices so outdated, the film feels like a sloppy, syrupy Tamil family drama from the 1960s—replete with evil capitalists and their bratty, over-privileged sons with an unstated cautionary: beware of the rich.

However, the film is pretty to look at, with faces too inexperienced to convey anything serious. This is an innocuous, naïve little concoction—not the least offensive, but annoying in its benignity. Interestingly, the women, including the leading lady, are constantly in a hijab, and yet seek to explore what would be considered Western values when it comes to matters of the heart.