I think people are most afraid of being lonely, hence, we want to build connections through love, lust, and friendship. But would it be okay if someone faked all emotion or pretended to fall in love? I don’t think anybody would want that, definitely not the girl Dina in Fajar Nugros’s film Sleep Call. Dina is a loan shark who helps other people clear their debts when she struggles to clear her own. Naturally, Dina’s own life is a mess, and to make ends meet, she often has to sleep with people from her office, but it’s clear she’s not happy with her situation. But, Dina finds comfort in her virtual relationship with Rama, which gives her peace in her chaotic life. However, a major revelation is made in Sleep Call when it is revealed that all the people Dina had slept with are turning up dead. Dina becomes suspicious that Rama, her online boyfriend, might be behind those brutal murders. It is, therefore, Dina tries to figure out if this guy she’s trusted is the real killer or just another lie in her life.
Spoilers Ahead
Why did Dina have to sleep with Tommy?
Dina was a girl in her twenties who had spent most of her life alone and depressed, but she always tried to comfort others. She had grown up in a very unhealthy abusive environment where Dina had seen her mother being beaten up by her father and had even tried to end her life to escape the suffering. But Dina made a promise to her mother to stay strong and take care of her. But this suffering never really seemed to end, because even as an adult also Dina found herself buried in debt as she tried to support her mother, who was in a psychiatric institution. She had to put aside her dream to become an air hostess to focus on survival and to make sure her mom got the care she needed. To keep up with everything, Dina took out loan after loan from the company where she herself worked as a loan shark. Every day was a struggle for her where she learned to put on a fake smile to get people to take out loans, and when they couldn’t pay, she had to switch to a tough, angry attitude to get them to settle their debts. The problem was, that Dina wasn’t really cut out for this heartless mean person act; she felt too much for these debtors and could relate to them easily. And guess what? There is always those power-hungry, extortionist people that you all know who take advantage of the helpless and it wasn’t different in Dina’s case as I told you earlier. To settle Dina’s debts, her office supervisor, Bayu, and an investor named Tommy wanted to take advantage of her situation and therefore, Dina was forced to do something she didn’t want to: sleep with Tommy because otherwise there was no other way out.
Why did Dina sleep with Bayu?
As I told you earlier how Dina found peace in her mess of a life with her online boyfriend Rama and even though she did not meet him, or didn’t know much about Rama’s work, why he only called her at night, she was happy just sharing her her problems with him as Dina felt Rama understood her completely. She would daydream about their dates by the riverside, cozy cafe outings, and late-night metro rides. These vivid fantasies felt more real than her chaotic life that blurred the line between reality and imagination. But her reality hit her hard when a debtor named Iwan Surwadi committed suicide because he couldn’t pay his debts. The pressure from her superiors made Dina act like a cold-hearted loan shark to threaten Iwan, who even followed her home to make her life even more stressful. Iwan’s death left Dina in a deeper mess, and she stopped imagining her perfect life with Rama. And just like that her dreams faded away, and she was left with the painful reality of her situation. So when Bayu, her office supervisor, saw her in this situation he wanted to give her the “comfort” that she needed to make her feel like that he really cared for her, and he knew exactly how to lure Dina with: security, money, and love. Dina tried to stay as aloof as possible for so long, but one night, she made a drunken mistake and slept with Bayu as she thought he was Rama. When she realized the truth the next morning, she was obviously devastated. Bayu made things worse when he shared their private pictures on social media to try to humiliate her and paint her as a desperate girl who would sleep with anyone just to get by.
What happened to Bayu and Tommy?
Dina’s mother was unavailable, and her best friend Bella was always tied up with her married life and kids, and for that, Dina felt completely alone. One day, after going out on a date with Bayu, Dina came home and got a chilling message: Bayu had been killed, and a video of his bloodied face was sent from an unknown number. If that was not enough, soon after she got another news about Tommy who was also found dead. As Dina tried to make sense of the situation around her, she started to think there might be someone out there trying to help her as they had seen her pain. Who else could it be but Rama, the love of her life? She convinced herself that he must be the one who tried to protect her, and thus to show her gratitude Dina just wanted to go to his place and thank him in person.
What happened to Rama?
What if I told you that everything Dina made herself believe was a lie to just calm her fears? Because there was no Rama who came to her rescue. In reality, her online boyfriend, Rama, was actually Reno, who lived in a wealthy neighborhood with his wife. When Dina finally traced his location and went to his house to thank him, she discovered the truth. The person she had trusted and loved, whom she thought would always be there for her, had nothing for her but betrayal. This realization hurt her deeply, and in her rage, she killed Reno. And it turns out she was also behind the deaths of Bayu and Tommy as Dina had reached her breaking point. Basically, she wanted to believe there was someone out there who cared for her and wanted to protect her, and that’s why she had imagined Rama as a savior who was out there defeating her enemies. To her, Bayu and Tommy were like the villains from the Ramayana, like Ravana, and Rama was her hero who fought for her. But she soon realized that no one was there to help her—she had to help herself and could not continue to be treated like a victim and let people take advantage of her. So, Dina decided to take control of her life. It was clear that just like her mother, her mental state had also deteriorated and her fantasy became her reality.
In Sleep Call’s ending, Dina, visited her ill mother in the mental hospital, dressed in an air hostess uniform. Well, yes, her dress looked strange. It could be speculated that maybe Dina wanted to live her dream of becoming an air hostess, or maybe she just wanted to fulfill a wish for her mother who wanted her daughter to become an air hostess. Either way, it seemed like a way for Dina to hold on to a dream that she knew might never come true in reality.
