The film Love for Sale was released in 2018 and has been followed up by a sequel starring the female lead, Arini, which is 1000% going on my watch list because surprisingly, I genuinely enjoyed this film. I say ‘surprisingly’, because at the beginning of this movie I was not a fan. I’ll be honest, I was expecting it to end with Richard and Arini together solely because I believed that Indonesian cinema would be years behind Hollywood cinema in terms of feminism. Strike one against my stereotypes.

However, instead I was rewarded with the acknowledgement in the film and in online reviews that yeah, Arini is too perfect for main character Richard, and instead of reverting to his old ways when she leaves, he actually proves to have grown as a person.

In order to properly analyse my own personal experience of watching this movie, there are a few…