Suikerfreule

Summary

Social drama with comical undertones about a woman who joins her husband in the Dutch East Indies.

Dirk van der Kooy goes back to the Dutch East Indies for another five year stint as the administrator of a sugar factory. His second wife Betje unexpectedly finds she can sell her little shop and decides to join him. Once there, she finds it hard to adjust and the fact that Dirk has a daughter from an earlier marriage to a Javanese woman makes it all the more difficult for Betje. There are rows and misunderstandings galore but finally Dirk and Betje kiss and make up and daughter Dolly marries her adored assistant administrator.

The film is set mostly in the Dutch East Indies but was largely filmed at the Cinetone Studios in Duivendrecht. Old archive footage of the Indonesian landscape was used as a backdrop as well as locally shot material from other sources. Suikerfreule and Rubber were one of the few pre-war films in which authentic on-the-spot footage of the Dutch East Indies can be seen.