Berbagi Suami (Love for share): the discourse of polygamy in a recent Indonesian film

Abstract

This article considers Berbagi Suami (Love for Share), a post-New Order Indonesian film written and directed by an Indonesian female director, Nia Dinata, in 2006. The film brings together the separate stories of three different women (Salma, Siti and Ming) who live in polygamous marriages in a modern city, Jakarta, Indonesia. Although there is no accurate data on polygamous marriage in Indonesia in either official statistics or polygamy studies, Dinata estimated that about 10 per cent of households in Indonesia are polygamous. Indeed, polygamy has become a much more openly practiced form of marriage since the post-New Order era and is a matter of vigorous public debate.