I returned to the Spot Taipei Film House to watch the second of the four films about foreign brides in Taiwan. I read in an article in the Taipei Times that these four films together are part of the event “We Are Family: Festival of New Immigrants” at the Spot. Also in this article is the interesting statistic that there are more than 450,000 of these married immigrants in Taiwan, with most coming from China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. And, I didn’t realize this, these four films were all produced by the same person, Khan Lee, along with the National Immigration Agency and Videoland Inc. I hadn’t realized that these four films shared origins.

The film I was there to see was called My Little Honey Moon. It was scheduled to start at 7:30, and I had enough time to go home after work and have a shower and a meal beforehand. That is always nice, and I arrived at the Spot refreshed and ready for a good movie experience, and I wasn’t disappointed. Only a few people were waiting when I arrived, and I sat down with them on the stone benches outside the cinema. Ten minutes before showtime, I got up and went to the door and the man who usually works the door took my ticket and told me, as he always does, “Anywhere, anywhere,” meaning that the Spot does not have reserved seating. You can sit anywhere you like. Where I like is usually in a middle row against the far right wall. By sitting there, I don’t block anyone’s view with my height, and no one ever sits in front of me. I find that it is not a good idea to sit too close to the screen at the Spot. The speakers sit behind the screen, and the screen has thousands of tiny holes in it to allow the sound to come through. The holes are invisible from most seats in the theater, but I find that if you sit too close, you can actually see the holes and it degrades the image a little bit. (And, if you do come to see a movie at the Spot, bring a jacket or something. The air conditioning is turned up to “Arctic Ice Storm”, and if you are in shorts and a T-shirt, you might find your teeth chattering before the movie is over.)

My Little Honey Moon was sold out most nights during its run at the 2012 New Taipei City Film Festival. I had wanted to see it then, but I couldn’t get a ticket. I was surprised, therefore, to see how few people had showed up for the screening at the Spot. I guess weeknights are difficult for people. I imagine the film will be very popular during the weekend, and if you want to go, I’d recommend getting a ticket early.

My Little Honey Moon tells the story of a young woman from Vietnam who has married a farmer in the Meinong district of southern Taiwan. I don’t want to give away any of the plot, so I’ll leave it at that. I enjoyed the film very much, and I saw more than a couple of the men in the audience surreptitiously wiping away tears during the more dramatic parts of the story. The story was good, the acting was equally good, and I loved the glimpses into the homes and lives of these people.

The main character of the movie, Joan, was played by the stunning Vietnamese actress Helen Thanh Dao. I was quite taken with her, to put it mildly. She’s beautiful, and she played Joan with a gentle and sweet character. I was completely lost in Joan’s story and totally invested in it emotionally. Then imagine my surprise when I discovered Helen Thanh Dao herself was in the audience that night! The movie ended, the lights came up, and she stood up in a row in front of me and was greeted with a burst of applause from the audience.

I was totally disarmed when Helen singled me out in the audience and thanked me for coming to see the movie. I was a bit tongue tied. I had a chance to exchange a few words with her outside the theater, and I found it hard to separate her from the character Joan that she had played in the movie. She was just as sweet and friendly in real life as the character she had played. Who knows what I said. I just sort of babbled about what a pleasant surprise it was to have her there in person. She then had to touch my arm and warn me, because I was so starstruck, I was about to walk right off the top of the stone steps! When I left, I still didn’t have full control of my limbs and I stumbled and lurched my way over the stone stepping stones in the Spot’s yard.

Wherever you are now, Helen, you have a fan for life…

As I said, I don’t want to talk about the movie too much and give away any of the plot. It’s a very dramatic and emotional story about family and children and marriage and finding your place in another country. At the end, though, I was left with lots of questions. It was the story of a young, intelligent, beautiful, hardworking, and nice Vietnamese woman living in a small farming village in Taiwan. But I ended up wondering how she actually got there. How does it happen that a young woman from Vietnam ends up on a farm in Meinong? What were the steps? Do these women decide to go to Taiwan and then sign up with an agency and take whichever man wants them? Do they have any control?

There was a very telling line in the movie that made Joan seem like a product that had been purchased and could be sent back for a replacement if defective. I can’t imagine that is how it works, but it would be interesting to know exactly how it does work. I’ve seen two of these movies so far, and the women in both movies are incredibly hardworking and self-effacing. To be honest, they struck me as too good to be true. No one can be that nice and hardworking and selfless. The thought passed through my mind that if this life they were leading in Taiwan was perfectly acceptable to them, then their home life in Vietnam and Indonesia must have been very bad indeed. If I were one of these women, I’d have been on the first plane home. The economy in Taiwan is certainly better than that in Indonesia or Vietnam, but anyone with the work ethic and intelligence of these women (to say nothing of their beauty) would surely be able to make a go of it. And they’d at least be with their friends and family and in their home country. I honestly saw nothing in their lives here in Taiwan that seemed advantageous or particularly good for them. So, from that point of view, these movies haven’t convinced me that they are realistic portrayals of what life is really like for these 450,000 women. I’d like to know more about the nitty-gritty of how this works. Perhaps the remaining two films, The Golden Child and The Moonlight in Jilin, will fill in some of the blanks for me. In any event, I’m looking forward to them.

Tags: Indonesia, Spot, Taipei Times, Taiwan, Vietnam