Why Not Barefoot Too?
Let’s just assume this movie’s pronatalist, anti-working woman message was unintentional, shall we?
Unexpected Courage
Director: Shawn Yu • Writer: Tseng Li-ting
Starring: René Liu, Simon Hsueh, Lee Lieh, Patty Lee
Taiwan • 1hr 51mins
Opens Hong Kong May 28 • IIA
Grade: D
If we’re going to make sweeping generalisations, then it’s fair to call Taiwan is the regional progressive hotspot. Marriage for LGBTQ+ residents is fully legal and visitors to the island often speak of an easy-going, relatively loose-lipped and outward looking population. So it’s with great pearl-clutching consternation that we are subjected to Shawn Yu Shao-hsiang’s Unexpected Courage | 我們意外的勇氣, an infuriating and saccharine melodrama about the sacred duty of motherhood, no matter the danger or cost of giving birth to the next generation of, what, consumers? Don’t even start me on this fucking messaging.
Short, inoffensive version? A 45-year-old Taipei-based professional talent agent, Le-fu (René Liu Ruo-ying), is on the cusp of scaling the heights of her career sector with a promotion to her agency’s office in Beijing. Things are good at work, and at home she has a lovely, budding director boyfriend, Po-en (Simon Hsueh Shih-ling), who’s 10 years younger. You go, gurl. But as she’s spinning a major sex tape scandal involving one of her artistes, she passes out for reasons, wakes up in hospital, and is told by the doctor she’s fine now but she best take bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy. What, now? Le-fu has a wonky uterus and was told she’d never get pregnant. Surprise! Now she and Po-en must decide how to proceed with both their lives.
45 and still no kids? Traitor
Were that the central conundrum of Unexpected Courage, it would be saccharine and mushy, but it would also be a fairly rote drama about a couple at opposite ends of the career spectrum wrestling with an unplanned pregnancy. Bottom line of course, they don’t need to decide; she does. But semantics aside, the story paints Le-fu and Po-en as a committed couple so fine. She does have a wonky uterus, so this surprise could be her only chance to have a child if she ever wanted one. But Po-en’s career as a director is just starting, and he’s 32 or 33, and does he really want to settle down now? Is he ready to be a baby daddy? Is the pregnancy – which will involve Le-fu be totally bedridden and pumped full of tocolytic drugs that prevent premature birth – very risky? She’s got to get to at least 36 weeks – assuming she opts for a birth. It’s not going to be fun, and it would be demanding of Po-en too. If it comes down to it, who does he let die? To boot, both Le-fu and Po-en come from less than ideal backgrounds and thorny childhoods that make them a bit gun shy on the whole parenting thing. It’s all very mature discussion and adulting, and credit to Liu and Hsueh for shading their characters with relatable fear, joy, impatience, regret and confusion that may come with the territory. Any empathy comes from them too, because Yu doesn’t speak in a visual language beyond sunny, soft and vaguely be-haloed.
And then you remember Taiwan is in the grips of a demographics quagmire, with one of the world’s lowest birthrates, at 0.72 per woman.
That’s when Unexpected Courage’s insidious pronatalist, anti-agency propaganda bullshit side exerts itself, and I truly hope its unintentionally. The facile emotionalism of the family drama and sometimes baffling character motivations the dominate the film early on despite Liu and Hsueh’s best efforts are bad enough; this movie simply isn’t living in the same reality we are. It’s truly hard to say why Le-fu and Po-en are even a couple. Do they like even each other? Do we need to care?
But then Yu and writer Tseng Li-ting double down on the virtue of childbirth – no matter how uncomfortable, personally risky and dull. Le-fu is in a basement room for months so she can be near an OR in case of a disaster (heaven forbid the baby be endangered). She only ruefully gives up the dream job she worked 25 years for – because I guess no women in China have children and also work. Po-en inadvertently gets involved with a young teacher (Patty Lee Pei-yu) he’s hired for an ad campaign he’s shooting, who happens to be spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on IVF treatments in order to do her womanly duty. Spending money on IVF isn’t wrong or bad for anyone who chooses it in good faith (neither are babies). Here, though, it’s held up as the logical next step if her eggs aren’t dropping (maybe) or his boys aren’t swimming (more likely). Chop chop people. Time for pups. For most of its second half the film wallows in every retrograde cliché and draconian gender affirmation on the menu, from the value of breeding over professional fulfilment to assurances Le-fu and Po-en will eventually get married. Right after Le-fu recovers from her harrowing but selflessly obligatory nine months as an incubator. Fuck off, movie.