That was director Mouly Surya's reply to Tempo when asked why she chose Marsha Timothy, an actress with an urban Jakarta background, to play Marlina, a village woman living on a hill in a remote Eastern Indonesian region.

But Mouly made the perfect choice. Marsha Timothy quickly transformed into Marlina, a widowed woman. When lonely, she sits beside her husband's mummified corpse, conversing with it, complaining to it, embracing it.

Because she does