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As well as having to deal with the multi-headed hydra of all the country’s other woes, Indonesians now face the very real possibility of being deprived of Hollywood and other imported movies, as the nation’s cinemas battle with new tax regulations. It’s all highly complex and convoluted, as these things invariably are. However, in a nutshell, the film industry is squaring off against the government regarding a threatened tax increase on imported films.

This would be a major blow to the cinema-going public, of course. Personally, I rely on the gentle flickering of the silver screen to prevent me from ever experiencing any genuine emotion and fear. Hence, a total psychic meltdown could follow should the psychological crutch of the Hollywood cliche be removed from my life. In any case, the speciously nationalistic argument being offered is that the government is trying to support the national film industry, not that it has ever cared about it before, but there you go.

A few shining beacons of excellence aside, the Indonesian film industry is primarily known for its gratuitously titillating, lowest common denominator fare, which is usually liberally peppered with toilet-roll wrapped zombies, buxom wenches straight from the central casting couch and balloon-bursting face-punch sound effects.

However, as we could all be forced to watch this stuff in the future, I thought that it would be best to check out a few local offerings. With this in mind, I picked up three local DVDs last week.

First up was “Nakalnya Anak Muda” (“Naughty Youngsters”), a murder thriller set in a spooky villa (yawn). In this effort, a group of chaps pick up a couple of sloe-eyed slatterns at a disco and they all head out to the countryside for a nice holiday, where the guy operating the dry-ice machine really lets rip with some pea-souper ambience.

Plot written by a hamster with its brain wired to a pocket calculator aside, Indonesian movie production values definitely seem to have improved of late and the action sequences had an almost Cape Fear-esque moodiness to them.

Alas, murder ensues and the only two surviving members of the gang head down to the local police station, where the local arm of the law proves to be a model of professional concern. This bit required a suspension of disbelief above and beyond the capabilities of my perhaps meager imagination. So I rebooted the DVD player and inserted our next Golden Garuda-nominated effort, “Wakil Rakyat” (“People’s Representatives”), which promised to be a political satire slash romantic comedy.

In this flick, we find ourselves at the conference of a fictional political party. The movie’s hero, a janitor at the conference, lets a cat loose backstage to take care of the building’s rat problem. Alas, however, the wily feline instead attacks the vermin-like political elites, a nice play on a popular political metaphor.

The love story in this one is, as usual, as slushy as the bottom of a warung cool box. However, there were a few nice touches of political satire to enjoy, which is something that, in my view, should definitely be encouraged. If the country’s script writers really sharpened up their knives, there would be enough material for thousands of movies.

The final show was Julia Perez’s “Istri Bo’ongan” (“Pretend Wife”). Hands shaking in anticipation of 90 minutes of truculent, quivering Perez, I loaded the disc into the machine, had a cold shower and pressed play. Julia’s busty substances had certainly been given a starring role and in the film’s opening scene we see our heroine picking up a guy in a bar, taking him home and then being roughly taken from behind against a plate-glass window.

After a break to take my blood pressure meds and apply a few icy flannels to my forehead, I pressed play again and pressed on with the movie. A tale of love, jealousy and deception unfolded before my eyes and built to a not entirely satisfying denouement, but who cares when Julia’s there to save the day. It was just as well I was watching this one at home because smoking isn’t allowed in Studio 21 cinemas and my retinas were definitely starting to smolder.

So, will the Indonesian movie scene flourish? Well, as French art-house ponce Jean-Luc Godard once said, “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.” By this account, Oscar nominations surely beckon.