REVIEW As a film about a child marriage, ‘Suami Aku Ustaz’ can be both enlightening and confounding. 

 

Enlightening, because it shows child marriage from the point of view of the child, but confounding, because despite the evident trauma to the child, they live happily ever after.

 

Based on a popular novel of the same title, the film essentially follows the first turbulent weeks of a young couple’s marriage - a school-going wife and her teacher husband.

 

Alisa (Nora Danish), 17, is coaxed into marrying her first cousin, twenty-something Hafiz (Adi Putra), who has just returned from Egypt where he pursued tertiary education in Islamic studies.

 

An ustaz, the mild-mannered Hafiz is supposed to look after the rebellious, tomboyish Alisa and show her the right path while her parents go to Mecca to perform the haj.

The most convenient way to do this, it seems, is to marry the two young ones off.

 

Child marriages are largely seen as a form of a child abuse, especially when the child is married off to someone much older.

In such a situation, a child does not have the ability to consent, leaving the child with no agency in the marriage, which will make him/her vulnerable for a lifetime.

 

Is the story of Alisa and Hafiz one of child abuse?

 

Let’s get some things out of the way. Alisa is 17, a year older than the legal age of consent in Malaysia. While she is still a schoolgirl, according to the law, she can consent to sex and marriage.

 

And although the film (erroneously) notes Syariah Court consent was obtained, Alisa could have very well agreed to marry Hafiz even without a nod from the court. But did she consent?

 

A child has no say

 

This is where things get murky. Portrayed mostly as a petulant child, Alisa is unequivocal about not wanting to be married to her cousin.

                                               

In one scene, she says she needs to focus on studying for her SPM exams, not concentrate on being a wife.

Her parents tell her that SPM is a “small thing” and that “the important thing is that she agrees” to the marriage. “Who said I agree?” she asks, pouting.

 

The audience in the cinema I went to - in a Malay-majority area, where most of those in the half-full cinema were women clad in tudung - laughed at the scene. But doesn’t this mean Alisa is being forced into marriage?

 

The audience - I believe they are the target audience of the film - didn’t think the girl was serious. Who could blame them? Unlike other more serious scenes in the film, this one was bereft of the weepy soundtrack to signify the gravity of the situation.

The filmmaker’s cue to the audience in this instance: She’s just a silly child, whose rantings are humoured by her loving parents.

 

However,  the ensuing scenes in the film underline the girl’s resistance even more clearly - she is rude to her new husband, she refuses to let him touch her, she is embarrassed to be seen with him and she is forced to lie to her best friends every day.

 

All the while, the po-faced Hafiz plays the patient ustaz, reminding her of her duties as an obedient Muslim wife. He even tells her he will “bear the sins” she is committing when she tearfully refused to consummate the marriage. He prefers that she gives up her virginity “sincerely”.

 

He doesn’t stop her from enjoying Korean soap operas (“If I tell you not to, you wouldn’t follow anyway”) and only loses his temper when he tells his child bride to come home (“NOW!”) when he finds out she’s out with her best friend Johan “without his permission”.

 

To be fair, Hafiz, while terrifyingly dull, is not exactly a paedophile and appears to be thrust into this marriage without much of a say either.

 

A pivotal scene

 

If you’re watching the film to find out more about child marriages, you may be persuaded by the sole powerful scene of this film.

 

(For this, the youthful Nora, who in real life is in her 30s, must be credited for her convincing performance.)

 

In it, Alisa runs after her best friend Johan, who just found out she is married. At the end of her tether, Alisa tells him how unhappy she is, and how she was forced into this marriage.

 

“You think I am happy letting my life go to waste?” she asks, but Johan doesn’t look back.

 

The scene is remarkably honest. For the first time, Alisa is acknowledging what she is giving up because of her marriage to Hafiz - her ambitions, her freedom, even this innocent friendship with a boy.

 

This short scene against the rest of the 94-minute teledrama-esque film underscores all that is wrong about child marriages. What is Alisa’s future? Does she even have a choice?

 

And yet, this powerful scene is completely overturned seconds after, when the camera pans out to reveal that Hafiz was at the top of the stairs. Hafiz was so shaken by his wife’s denouncement of him that he has to go take emergency leave from work.

 

Hurt or not, it is emotional blackmail - and it works on the 17-year-old. It doesn’t help that Alisa’s other best friend puts her on Facebook and someone lodges a report against Hafiz for statutory rape.

What is a teenager alone to feel? She caused all this because of her “recalcitrance” and, of course, when Alisa meets him at the lock-up, she says sorry through the plexiglass in a barrage of tears.

 

Man of one's dreams

 

Bruised (for he was beaten up by other inmates when they found out he was arrested for raping a minor) but still ever saintly, he turns this into another ‘teaching moment’ by telling her that a pious wife is worth a thousand pious men, and that God hears the prayers of a pious wife.

 

Putting myself in the shoes of the target audience, I am assuming that Hafiz is the husband of one's dreams.

He is God-fearing, dutiful, patient, righteous, polite and after he shaves off his odious mustache and starts wearing slim fit clothes, a hottie to boot.

 

There is no equality in the marital home of Alisa and Hafiz, but I guess the target audience would probably say that a good Muslim wife does not want to be her husband’s equal, rather be led to the path of righteousness.

 

The film ends with Alisa apologising - again - and the couple embracing on the marital bed, a hint that they would now do the deed. I was sitting at the far end of the cinema, too far from the others in the cinema, but I could almost hear them melt into a puddle of mush.

 

We don’t know what happened to Alisa and Hafiz after the embrace. But what we know is that Hafiz would take care of Alisa for the rest of his life - he asks her to pray for their marriage to last forever, on earth and the hereafter.

 

Is having a man to care for you all there is to aspire for in life?

 

 

AIDILA RAZAK is a member of the Malaysiakini team.