Review of Cigarette Girl / Gadis Kretek

In 2023, I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with Kamila Andini, who’s a director I’ve admired in the past two years.

I previously covered her work Yuni as a part of the Asian American International Film Festival in 2022, and in 2023 I had the chance to see Nana and have a Zoom interview with her due to my work with MovieWeb.

I already really enjoyed her work before talking to her, and when I had the chance to speak about it and her influences, I was even more impressed. It was during that interview she also told me about her upcoming Netflix show, which would be Cigarette Girl in English.

So when the show came out on the American Netflix, I bookmarked it and prepared to watch that weekend. The show is only five episodes long, but it only needs those five episodes to be honest.

There’s a lot packed into this story, but it’s done in such a concise way that the short length of the television show works in its favor.

Alright, I’m rambling! Let’s get into the review.

A love story in Indonesia’s 1960s kretek industry collides with the present day.

Although we begin this story in the present day, of 2001, it weaves in the past flashbacks to fill in the gaps of the story in a way that I found to be super poetic. In modern Indonesia, a cigarette mogul, Raja, is terminally ill.

He is going to turn over the kretek business to his sons, as he has three of them, but he keeps mentioning the same name over and over again: Jeng Yah. After his son Lebas hears about his father’s obsession with the name, he decides to go find the woman called Jeng Yah, as that would be one of his father’s dying wishes.

He goes to a kretek museum, where he meets a female doctor named Arum, who knows the people in the picture Lebas has.

One of them is her mother, Rukayah, and aunt, Jeng Yah, whose actual, name is Dasiyah. The two keep meeting up, where they learn the real story behind these three individuals.

The story there begins in 1964, when Dasiyah, the daughter of a kretek manufacturer, dreams of making her own flavors. She’s shut out of the Flavor Room and business because she is a woman, but when she falls in love with an employee, Raja, this earns the disapproval of her family. They want her to marry Seno, the son of another kretek manufacturer.

Her father fires Raja when they reveal their relationship, but when Raja brings one of the cigarettes Dasiyah, who he calls Jeng Yah, to her father, he realizes her talent.

Her kretek becomes one known as Gadis Kretek, or Cigarette Girl, and it thrives. However, because Indonesia is going through a turbulent time in the sixties, an unfortunate series of events ruins Dasiyah’s family, forces her apart from Raja, and creates an ultimate betrayal that will lead to the events of the present day.

Although the story that goes into this television show is quite sad in nature, it has its pockets of shining moments that are filled with a quiet form of joy. Its focus is the brilliance of a young woman locked out of her passion because she is a woman, and even later in life, she does not get the same opportunities because she is a woman.

With the past woven together with the present, there are emotional arcs in both time periods, and I even found myself crying when I finished the show. And here’s something to know: I don’t typically cry when I watch television like this.

Andini made the television series with her husband, Ifa Isfanyah, and I think they did quite a good job with the direction and directing.

They didn’t write the screenplay, which is based on a novel, but the visuals and pacing was really good in this show. It felt like it went by so quickly, and was wrapped up neatly.

Overall Thoughts

This was such a beautiful show. I typically haven’t liked the other Indonesian dramas I’ve watched, but I hope a show like this opens the floodgates and allows more talent and opportunities to shine from Indonesia and Southeast Asia as a whole.

I think the region has such a fascinating culture, history, and stories to show the world, but they haven’t had the same opportunities as their East Asian counterparts.

Regardless, go watch Cigarette Girl if you haven’t already. It’s so stunning, and I think it’s going to haunt me for a while.

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