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?