Stone Turtle

The stone turtle, we are told, was an ordinary male turtle who became separated from his true love during a storm. Washing up on an unfamiliar island, he met a hermit crab who tole him about a sacred pool and warned him not to eat anything from it. The turtle found the pool, but the creatures in it looked so delicious that he couldn’t resist. On his way back to the shore, his whole body turned to stone.

There are other versions of this story, some of which we shall hear in due course.

There are other versions of most stories – alternative ways in which they could play out – but sometimes it’s difficult to find one without a tragic outcome. Right from this film’s opening scenes, when we witness a young woman who is saying her prayers struck over the head with a rock, horror seems inescapable. “Poets’ endings are always tragic,” says Zahara (Asmara Abigail), the only witness. Can she escape from poetry, fate, even film, and find something real?

Ming Jin Woo’s tricksy little fable, which screened as part of the 2023 Glasgow Film Festival, has surprising emotional resonance despite the fact that its first lesson is in the danger of taking anything at face value. It orbits around three characters: Zahara; the young girl, Nika (Samara Kenzo) who lives with her; and Samad (Bront Palarae), a man who arrives on their small island ostensibly as part of an academic project, monitoring leatherback turtles. He says that he’s heard that the island is shaped like a turtle; Zahara says that she was told that it’s shaped like a sleeping pregnant woman. Like many things here, it’s a matter of perspective.

Set almost entirely outdoors (Zahara and Nika have only a small shack to sleep in), the film makes good use of the wild island scenery, from the flat golden sand of the beach, where a strange ritual is performed, to the thick forest where shadows seem to slip between the trees and slipping into mud can be deadly. Rocky cliffs mean that although the place is small it’s easy for things to slide out of view, and the flat blue water hides dangerous currents beneath the surface.

Nika is ten and unschooled, despite Zahara’s efforts to get her rehistered. She is literate, however, and reads comics, with their own tragic love stories. Zahra’s guardedness about the turtles soon leads Samad to suspect that she makes her living by selling their eggs, but something else keeps him on the island, keeps him from asking questions. He believes that he has caught a glimpse of his missing brother, Ariff. Zahara says that there are no men on the island, only ghosts.

Supernatural elements provide another way of exploring a story which ultimately – and sadly – owes more to the modern world than to the traditions of this place. Power slips from one character to another with disconcerting ease, and as the story progresses, what might seem confounding, a product of myth or dream or hallucination, takes on an abject clarity. There is a trap here, but who made it, and who will be caught in it? Ming uses uniquely Malaysian elements to craft a thriller which will stand up anywhere.