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.
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.
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.
The film's screenwriter, Oka Aurora, notes that the real Norma was involved in the scriptwriting process, allowing her story to be portrayed authentically. Today, the real Norma works as an outsourced worker in Serang, her hometown.
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.
Ultimately, the film serves as a reflection of contemporary Indonesian culture, shedding light on issues of infidelity, societal expectations, and the power of storytelling in digital spaces.
