‘Sore: Wife for the Future’ Review: A Contrived Romantic Fantasy

“Sore: Wife from the Future” asks much of its audience. From believing in time travel to imagining outlandish fantasy scenarios, Indonesia’s Oscar entry relies on the suspension of disbelief. Many films have managed to convert their audience to a unique story construct. Here, unfortunately, that ask proves to be too much. Almost every line of dialogue comes off heavy-handed, the visuals are standard and have none of story’s fantastical elements of the story, and the screenplay takes so many leaps that it dulls the sense of surprise. Rather than a light dramedy about love, the film becomes a chore to sit through.

“Sore: Wife from the Future” strives to be a bolder take on the manic pixie dream girl stereotype. The film follows Jonathan (Dion Wiyoko), an Indonesian photographer adrift in Croatia. His career has stalled, his girlfriend is fed up with him and he leads an unhealthy lifestyle. He’s a shell of a man in need of fixing. Enter Sore (Sheila Dara), who appears one day in his bedroom claiming to be his wife from the future. At first he thinks that she’s been sent by his manager (Goran Bogdan) as a practical joke to mess with him. Yet she knows so much about his life that Jonathan begins to believe that she might be who she claims to be.

In this knottily plotted film, however, even more bizarre discoveries regarding the title character are in store. Everytime Sore reveals a major fact to Jonathan, she bleeds out, dies and time is reset. Then the film goes back to a new meeting between Jonathan and Sore, with his memory of her erased and her claiming once again to be from the future.

The repetitiveness of the plot is not helped by the many montages writer-director Yandy Laurens uses as shortcuts, instead of writing scenes that show how the central relationship is developing. The audience never understands what bonds Jonathan and Sore together. Their relationship is supposed to be taken as one that transcends…