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How a man's affair with his mother-in-law became a viral film in Indonesia
How a man's affair with his mother-in-law became a viral film in Indonesia
For months, Indonesian movie audiences have been talking about one film: Norma, the story of a seemingly blissful marriage shattered by the husband's clandestine affair with his mother-in-law.
It's the kind of plot that was always going to attract melodrama fans. But what has made Norma a nationwide obsession is the fact that it's based on a viral true story.
In 2022, Norma Risma, a woman in Serang City on Indonesia's Java island, exposed her husband and mother's affair in a TikTok video.
Her story quickly racked up millions of views, made headlines and ultimately brought her a movie deal that has taken South East Asia by storm.
Norma, which hit Indonesian theatres in March and Netflix in August, soon became one of the most watched movies, not just in Indonesia but also Malaysia and Singapore, where there are large Malay-Muslim populations.
It also follows a winning formula that Indonesian filmmakers have discovered: adapting viral social media scandals.
Until this June, Indonesia's highest-grossing film of all time was KKN di Desa Penari, a 2022 horror story about the haunting of six university students, which came from a popular thread on X. In 2023 came Sewu Dino, another horror flick adapted from a story shared by the same X account.
Equally popular are tales of a more salacious persuasion: Ipar Adalah Maut, a 2024 Indonesian movie about an affair between a man and his sister-in-law, was marketed as a true story adapted from a TikTok video. The 2022 drama series Layangan Putus, about a family torn apart by a cheating husband, also got its inspiration from TikTok.
Such themes are highly taboo in Indonesia, where adultery is punishable with jail time. The country's new criminal code, set to take effect nationwide next year, outlaws sex outside marriage - and in its most conservative province, couples are already publicly flogged for premarital sex.
But in this culture of religious conservatism, experts say, a voyeuristic interest in household scandals thrives.
With the help of social media, stories that had mostly been limited to neighbourhood gossip now make for viral "pelakor" content, a slang term for homewrecker and an oft-used keyword in videos of wives confronting their husbands' mistresses.
"With films about these scandals, people are given a space to peek into someone else's household problems," SM Gietty Tambunan, a member of the Jakarta Arts Council Film Committee, tells BBC Indonesian.
Especially because of that conservative culture, people are becoming even more curious.
Vero, a 42-year-old housewife in Jakarta, has been following Norma's story since it went viral on TikTok. It made her "furious with the husband and mother", she tells BBC Indonesian.
"When I knew this story was being made into a movie, I wanted to see how cruel these two people were to Norma," she says.
In the cinema she cried at the movie's climax, when Norma weaved through a crowd outside her house to find her half-dressed husband and mother in the room.
The tender scenes of Norma's husband and mother resisting and then realising their romance has both scandalised and captured viewers.
"Surely after filming this they will feel sick," a TikTok user commented on a scene where the pair kissed. In the film, a friend who discovers the pair's illicit relationship vomits when she catches them in the act.
Ms Gietty warns that these narratives have a dangerous tendency to put the blame mostly on women rather than the cheating men. In these feuds between the legitimate spouse and the illicit lover, "the man tends not to receive any punishment," she says.
But what sets the film Norma apart is the involvement of the protagonist herself in the creative process, the film's screenwriter Oka Aurora tells BBC Indonesian. She is also behind the script for Ipar Adalah Maut and Layangan Putus, the two other TikTok-inspired productions.
After intense discussions with Norma about her feelings and her mother's backstory, the film's "core story remains broadly consistent", says Oka, though she added that there were "definitely certain parts that were dramatised to play with the audience's emotions".
This film is also a way for people to release emotions and have fun. So when they leave the cinema, there are things they feel and talk about.
Today, the real Norma works as an outsourced worker in Serang, her hometown.
Her mother, Rihanah, has returned home to live with the family after an eight-month prison stint for adultery. Rozy, Norma's ex-husband, was sentenced to nine months in jail.
During a press appearance for the film in February, Norma said she was encouraged by the messages she had received from other victims of cheating spouses.
"When I experienced [the affair], I thought, 'Why am I being cheated on by the person closest to me? Am I the only one experiencing this?' It turns out that when I spoke up, many people had experienced the same thing," said Norma.
Oka, the film's screenwriter, echoes the feminist message behind the film. This is "a small step for women to speak out about the infidelity and violence they face", she says.
Ms Gietty says films like Norma, based on true stories about domestic troubles, can serve as "a space for empowerment for women" in a patriarchal society and give them "the courage to speak up".
Norma has declined BBC Indonesian's interview requests, though she continues to share life updates on her public social media account - to gushing support from fellow Indonesians.
This month, she posted photos on TikTok showing her and a cake sent by the movie's production company. It was met with hundreds of well wishes.
"You deserve the world," one user wrote.
Another comment read: "Ms Norma, after watching your life story in the cinema, I really wanted to hug you."
Source: BBC
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