Love For Share
Berbagi Suami
credits:
Director: Nia DinataProducers: Elza Hidayat, Claude Kunetz
Writer: Nia Dinata
Cast: Jajang C Noer, Shanty , Dominique A. Diyose, El Manik
Indonesia 2006 | 120 mins | 35mm | Bahasa Indonesian w/E.S.
A side effect of recent political events in Indonesia is the resurgence of open polygamy, not just among Muslims but in the Chinese and Javanese communities as well. Winner of the Best Film Award at the recent Hawaii International Film Festival, this engaging new work by award-winning female director Nia Dinata weaves three stories of women dealing with their status as first, second and even third wives.
Salma, a respected gynecologist and model wife to a Muslim politician, gets a nasty shock at a reception for her husband: a younger woman holding his toddler is publicly coming up to introduce herself. Although unable to “just pretend she doesn’t exist,” as the husband helpfully suggests during a stormy argument, she suppresses her bitterness with a serenity that exasperates her modern-thinking son. But the shocks don’t stop even after Salma becomes a widow. Now engrossing herself in medical practice, she examines a pregnant woman who figures prominently in the next story of this film.
With sly humor and sympathy, Dinata dramatizes a wide range of attitudes among Indonesian women regarding love, marriage, family responsibility and the inevitable intimacy of women who share one man. Nifty plot twists involving taxis and takeout link the stories together into a portrait of alternative lifestyles in contemporary Jakarta, while along the way the film even provides some incisive commentary on Indonesians’ reactions toward the tsunami in Aceh. Lively, topical, and hard-hitting, LOVE FOR SHARE will without a doubt provoke the liveliest postscreening discussions of the festival.
—Frako Loden
