The Night of the Giraffe

Lana (Ladya Cheryl) was just a little girl when she was abandoned by her father at the zoo. Since that time, she has lived in a microcosm all her own and, raised by the zookeepers, becomes a permanent part of a small society of her own. She does not know any other world than the zoo. She loves life here and especially loves the animals. For years, Lana's everyday life remains the same. But then a young man in cowboy gear ((Nicholas Saputra), a charismatic occasional magician, shows up at the zoo and upsets Lana's feelings mightily. She falls in love with the man and is even willing to leave the zoo for him. At the magician's side, she manages to cope with the separation from her animals. But then one day he disappears in the middle of a cloud of magical smoke and Lana is once again, as she was as a small child, completely on her own.

Filmmaker Edwin's The Night of the Giraffe is a film that is difficult to characterize or describe, and not only because of its lack of a clear narrative structure. The story, collaged from many different fragments, always seems playful and dreamlike, while the images are nevertheless very much anchored in reality. The symbolism isn't really subtly packaged, but it's quite effective due to some very nice snapshots. Like the animals, Lana is not trapped in her natural environment at the zoo. But she manages to adapt, to discover joy in the little things like the elephants' flapping ears. Still, her life is filled with longing. When she meets the lean and feels his touch, she believes she has found what she longs for. She leaves home to find happiness in another place.

Here lies the central idea of the film. It is about longings, home, and very essential human needs. Edwin, in his own unusual way, shows the twisted paths one must take at times to end up where one's heart belongs. That in itself is really beautiful, but the very carried, at times somewhat unwieldy production requires the viewer to engage with it completely. The sustained pace (it takes almost 40 minutes for the magician to appear, for example), the lack of a classic narrative structure and the rather sparsely used dialogue could lead viewers who have rarely or never before tried their hand at more experimental arthouse cinema to find the whole thing too exhausting or even boring. However, for those who dare to try more unusual fare and would like to be transported by Edwin into his very special dream world, The Night of the Giraffe can be warmly recommended, despite some minor lengths.

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp