Yasmine Film Difficulty Ranking: 2
Why Watch Yasmine?
- For the emotional ups and downs of life in High School
- If you like martial arts revenge stories (Ip Man, Enter the Dragon, Furie)
- For a dream team of coaches for a bit of added comedy
From: Brunei, Asia Watch: Trailer, Hoopla, Kanopy, Tubi, JustWatch Next: Sepet, Dhalinyaro, Bad Genus
The Ups and downs of high school
Yasmine opens with a brutal martial arts fight between two men at night. They’re surrounded by a crowd of people and lit up by a few lights. The fight ends when Yasmine wakes up and the brutality of the fight is juxtaposed against the peaceful happiness of Yasmine’s life. She wakes up in a tree house, gathers her stuff in her pastel colored room, smiles and gives the peace sign to her dad all to the tune of happy pop music. It feels like a 2000’s pop music video. She even has a typically attractive group of high school friends with matching jackets to emphasize her cookie cutter perfect life.
However, as this is a high school movie (and not a musical), if there are ups, there are downs. As quickly as the edgy martial arts fight at the start of the movie is switched for Yasmine’s happy life, Yasmine’s happy life is thrown a curve ball when her dad announces he can’t afford to send her to the international school with her friends. She loses her friends, her lover, and her life as soon as we’re introduced to it. The ups and downs of the first 10 minutes keep repeating throughout the film.
Martial Arts Vengeance
Another typical feature of high school movies are characters motivated by jealously. Maybe someone else is cooler than them, or better at sport. In Yasmine‘s case, someone else is dating the boy she likes. To try and get her revenge, she takes up Silat (the national Martial Arts of Brunei) to get her revenge and win back her lover. However, in her quest to become the better fighter, she goes full Anakin Skywalker and hunts down a teacher to show her the deadliest moves to give her the upper hand. It shows just how far she will go in the name of vengeance, blinding her from the happiness she already has in front of her. It also shows how brutal Silat is as a martial art.
A Coaches Dream Team
There are probably too many coaches in Yasmine. There’s the Will Ferrell style high school coach, there’s a rival coach who doesn’t want to train them, there’s a coach from rural Brunei disabled from a fight earlier in his career, there’s the other coach Yasmine finds to teach her the deadliest moves, there’s her dad, and also her Quran coach. Some are funny, some are serious, and some are family. Each one of these coaches gives Yasmine their own pieces of wisdom, leaving us and Yasmine with a long list of life lessons. I guess it makes a point about how the more people we listen to and learn from, the better we become. However, it feels a bit absurd when the camera cuts between Yasmine fighting and the many different faces of her coaches in her final fight.
What to Watch Next
If you’re after more international high school films check out our reviews of Malaysia’s Sepet, Djibouti’s Dhalinyaro, and Thailand’s Bad Genius. Of the three, Bad Genius is the most thrilling, Sepet focuses on a cheesy romance, whilst Dhalinyaro offers the most depth.
Or, if you just want to watch more martial arts fights, check out Ip Man and Kung Fu Hustle from Hong Kong/China, Ong Bak from Thailand, The Man From Nowhere from South Korea, or Black Dynamite from the U.S.
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