Yasmine (2014)
Brunei Darussalam is, to put it gently, not a country that tends to dominate film festival circuits or multiplex schedules. With a population of under half a million and no particularly established commercial film industry to speak of, any feature production coming out of the Sultanate is something of a rare event. Yasmine, released in 2014 and directed by Siti Kamaluddin, holds a notable place in that context: it is widely regarded as one of the first Bruneian films to achieve meaningful regional distribution, making it a genuinely curious artefact for anyone interested in cinema from corners of the world that rarely get their own productions. The film sits within a broader tradition of Southeast Asian martial arts storytelling, a tradition that runs from Hong Kong action pictures through to the wave of Indonesian and Malaysian action cinema that drew international attention in the 2000s and early 2010s. At its centre is silat, a centuries-old martial art indigenous to the Malay archipelago and practised across Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Giving silat a starring role alongside a teenage protagonist is a choice that plants the film firmly in both a cultural inheritance and a recognisable coming-of-age genre framework.
Siti Kamaluddin, working through the production company Origin Artistic, approaches the material with an evident enthusiasm for the form. Her background is more rooted in television and short-format production, and that lineage leaves certain marks on Yasmine, for better and worse. The film's 109-minute runtime gives it room to breathe, though whether it uses all of that space wisely is a fair question to ask. Indonesian actor Reza Rahadian appears in a supporting role, lending the production some cross-border credibility (Rahadian is a genuinely decorated figure in Indonesian cinema, with awards including multiple Citra Awards to his name). Lead actress Liyana Yus carries the title role, a high school student restless under the weight of academic pressure and a demanding father, who stumbles into the world of silat after a boy attempts to use his martial arts skills to catch her eye. It is the sort of premise that could work equally well as a light television drama or as an action-forward genre piece, and the tension between those two possibilities turns out to be the defining characteristic of the whole film. The supporting cast, including Roy Sungkono, Nadiah Wahid and Agus Kuncoro, rounds out a production that feels polished but unremarkable in its technical presentation, competently assembled without quite finding a distinctive visual personality.
For those who have followed Southeast Asian cinema on this site before, there is a thread worth pulling here. The blend of culturally grounded storytelling and genre ambition is something that comes up in Simpati (2019) as well, another regional production trying to balance local specificity with broader genre expectations. And if you are interested in how teenage protagonists are placed at the centre of films from outside the English-language mainstream, Macca's look at Capernaum (2018) covers some thematically adjacent ground, even if the tonal register is very different indeed.
It’s absolutely brilliant to see a feature film emerging from Brunei, such a wonderfully niche country in the landscape of world cinema.
The premise is a unique hook in Siti Kamaluddin’s 2014 film Yasmine: fed up with her studies and her strict father, a high school student named Yasmine decides to take up Silat (a traditional Southeast Asian martial art) after a boy shows off his own skills to impress her. It’s a charming, feel-good setup that immediately sets a positive, uplifting tone for the picture, grounding it in a very specific and vibrant cultural backdrop.
However, as the narrative unfolds, you can’t help but notice the film suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. It finds itself delightfully stuck halfway between a tender coming-of-age story, a Hallmark-style made-for-TV cuddlecore, and a gritty martial arts epic. While this ambitious tonal swerve does make the movie suffer slightly in terms of cohesive pacing, you really have to admire Kamaluddin’s willingness to mash up these vastly different genres. It’s a bold, if slightly messy, attempt to give a young audience a bit of everything, blending the sweet, innocent trials of teenage friendships and social media with the fierce, disciplined world of combat.
The script is certainly odd, constantly pivoting between lighthearted chats about teenage social media drama and Yasmine transforming into a total kick-ass Silat martial artist. It genuinely feels like Tiger Stripes meeting Ong-Bak in the weirdest way possible. When the film finally commits to the action, the fight scenes are actually quite good, showcasing some decent choreography and physical dedication from the cast. I have to give a massive shout-out to the fantastic costume design, particularly the Silat instructor who rocks a brilliant yellow and black tracksuit clearly inspired by Bruce Lee in Game of Death. It’s a lovely, cheeky nod to martial arts history that had me grinning from ear to ear.
My only real gripe is that it takes nearly a full hour of this teenage melodrama before any of the martial arts action we were promised actually kicks in. If the film had tightened up that first act, it would have been an even stronger ride. Still, despite its structural wobbles and genre-blending confusion, Yasmine is a highly watchable, charming piece of cinema. It’s a lovely, culturally significant film that brings the beautiful tradition of Silat to the global stage with a massive amount of heart.
It might not be a flawless martial arts masterpiece, but it’s a decently enjoyable, positive ride that is well worth your time.
Yasmine is the kind of film that earns a certain goodwill simply by existing, and there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that. Films that bring underrepresented martial traditions, cultural settings and national cinemas to a wider audience are doing something worthwhile regardless of their structural imperfections. As Macca's review suggests, the heart is clearly in the right place, and when the film commits to its action sequences it demonstrates that the talent and physical dedication are present on screen. The identity crisis he identifies is a real one, but it is arguably the identity crisis of a young national cinema still working out what it wants to say and how to say it, which is a more sympathetic framing than simply calling it an uneven script. Whether you come to it as a martial arts enthusiast, a world cinema curious, or simply someone who likes a feel-good underdog story with decent fight choreography, there is something here worth your evening. Not every film needs to be a masterpiece. Sometimes it just needs to mean something to someone. Yasmine, to its credit, clearly does.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2014 | Watched: 2026-07-06
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Yasmine (2014) on YouTube
Where to watch
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