In the Past

Indonesia used to love its bom seks, the curvaceous pretty young things who teetered on their high heels in numerous slapstick comedies and sex farces in the 1970s and ‘80s. Although some of the former starlets prefer to keep that chapter of their life firmly closed, director Joko Anwar finds one willing to tell all.

Erna Santoso’s life story is the perfect material for a biopic. Not that nobody hasn’t tried. A producer friend of hers wanted to put her story on screen, but he died before the project took off.

Other filmmakers may be fuzzy about who she is; although she was in more than 40 movies, she was never a leading lady, but the token sexy supporting actress. Still, the 51-year-old has an interesting character to go with an interesting life: a turbulent, sometimes tragic life, to be precise.

She moved to Jakarta from Surakarta, Central Java, in 1975 to study cinematography at the Jakarta Institute of Arts where she quickly caught the attention of directors, including the renowned Teguh Karya, who cast her as Lady Macbeth in a stage performance.

Her first movie was one of the many Indonesian versions of The Exorcist called Arwah Penasaran (The Evil Spirit, 1975). She soon became known as an actress willing to wear skimpy attire on screen and pose for cheesecake photographs.

“I guess we just didn’t have shame in the old days,” Erna says with a laugh. “I would proudly wear a bikini while posing on a rattan chair. Today, if a model has to wear a bikini, she has to do it at a swimming pool set or a beach. I guess the standard was different then.”

She is, of course, no longer the doe-eyed beauty of her youth. But she is carefully groomed and still has beautiful eyes. And she never reveals regrets or shame about the past.

When her career was on the rise, her boyfriend, a prince in Surakarta’s Mankunegaran royal palace, proposed to her. It was to be a union of very different cultures; he was a Javanese prince from a background of strict decorum, she was what was known as a “daring” actress of mixed Chinese descent.

“The confrontation made us feel like we were nearing doomsday,” she says of opposition from the royal family.

The wedding went ahead anyway in 1976 and, a year later, a daughter was born. Tragedy struck three months later when they were in a car accident; the prince was killed and Erna injured. When she recovered she returned to Jakarta and quickly started making movies again.

She remarried in 1985 to another member of Javanese royalty but separated soon after her second daughter, the actress Ardina Rasti, was born. Her husband’s family, she says, was fervently religious and would not let her return home after dusk.

After the national film industry collapsed in the early 1990s, she founded Erna Santoso Productions, a production house for TV dramas. Just as the company was growing, her newly built, expensive studio was destroyed by fire during shooting.

“I could only watch the fire from my house,” she recalls.

She sold everything she had and quickly reestablished the company, which now mostly produces documentaries for regional administrations and ministries. It is more reliable work than producing TV dramas; she says she has yet to be paid by TV stations for several series.

She is also active as the chairwoman of The Indonesian Children’s Foundation. The foundation, established in 2000, gives skill training to disadvantaged children, including street kids. Not too many people known about this side of her life because she rarely discusses it with reporters.

“These days if people do social activities, like with the flood victims, they always bring along infotainment reporters. I don’t get it,” Erna says of publicity-hungry stars.

Juggling her time between her production company, social activities and as a mentor to her daughter, she is not ready to slow down.  She says she is considering her options as a big screen producer.

If things do not work out, she will no doubt move on to something else. She has dealt with life’s hard knocks and survived. And that biopic is always something to fall back on.  

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