- The Good Daughter
a film by YuYing Wu
SYNOPSIS
THE GOOD DAUGHTER is a cinema verite portrait of Azhe, a young woman from the Mekong Delta who moves to a foreign country to marry a complete stranger in order to support her impoverished family back home. Like many families of South Vietnamese veterans who fought alongside American troops in the Vietnam War and have since faced decades of debilitating retribution, Azhe’s marriageability is her family’s best hope to stave off destitution. For Azhe, this means living in a small fishing village in Taiwan with a crippeld husband, the two adorable children they have together, and an abusive mother-in-law.
Filmed over the course of three years, THE GOOD DAUGHTER offers an intimate, unflinching account of Azhe as she confronts discrimination in Taiwan for being a foreign bride and works two back-breaking jobs to support both of her families — all the while fighting back against feeling victimized by her utter lack of options. In the process, the film bears witness to an essential contradiction in the lives of migrant women like Azhe: As her children grow older and their financial needs increase, can Azhe continue to devote herself unconditionally to her struggling family back home, or must she now focus solely on the new family she created in Taiwan? And, in the process, how can she realize her dream that her daughters might have a more hopeful future than her own?
Matchmaking Trade in Asia
In Taiwan, as in several other relatively prosperous Asian countries, including China, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore, relentless demographic and cultural pressures have shrunk the pool of marriageable local women in many rural areas and small towns, creating a social crisis that has deepened over the past several decades. At the same time, a significant number of families in relatively poor Asian nations such as Cambodia and Vietnam have faced endemic poverty, compelling many of them to look to the marriageability of their unwed daughters as a source of hard-to-find but desperately needed family income. The result has been a booming Asian regional matchmaking trade, in which men from richer countries import foreign brides to provide them with children and household labor, while women from poorer countries enter a relationship that holds out at least the hope of economic security and an opportunity to send money back home. But the reality of this pervasive Asian social experiment was far more complicated. Clearly, the message of the ubiquitous marketing brochures stapled on rural walls and telephone poles in Taiwan, luring lonely men with the explicit promise of “hard-working and obedient” brides from Vietnam, and the implicit but strongly-hinted promise of sex, was far from the whole story.
Other films and television newsmagazine segments have emphasized the more sensational aspects of the foreign bride issue, focusing primarily on the oppression of the young women, or the links between matchmaking and sex trafficking, Wu’s film takes a very different and quieter approach. “The Good Daughter” looks closely at one particular marriage between a Taiwanese husband and his Vietnamese wife, to explore how a traditional and fundamental human relationship is affected by a dramatic departure from traditional marital geography. It shows how the cultural distance and economic disparities that accompany a foreign marriage place ordinary domestic stresses under extraordinary pressure, bringing many marriages to and in many cases past the breaking point. Underscoring the universality of a story too often presented as an exotic curiosity, the film makes clear that the essential challenges faced any foreign bride and her husband – confronting the unfamiliar, negotiating differences, dealing with in-laws, balancing ambivalence for one’s spouse with unconditional love for one’s children, staying together – are common to couples everywhere.
In Taiwan, as in several other relatively prosperous Asian countries, including China, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore, relentless demographic and cultural pressures have shrunk the pool of marriageable local women in many rural areas and small towns, creating a social crisis that has deepened over the past several decades. At the same time, a significant number of families in relatively poor Asian nations such as Cambodia and Vietnam have faced endemic poverty, compelling many of them to look to the marriageability of their unwed daughters as a source of hard-to-find but desperately needed family income. The result has been a booming Asian regional matchmaking trade, in which men from richer countries import foreign brides to provide them with children and household labor, while women from poorer countries enter a relationship that holds out at least the hope of economic security and an opportunity to send money back home. But the reality of this pervasive Asian social experiment was far more complicated. Clearly, the message of the ubiquitous marketing brochures stapled on rural walls and telephone poles in Taiwan, luring lonely men with the explicit promise of “hard-working and obedient” brides from Vietnam, and the implicit but strongly-hinted promise of sex, was far from the whole story.
Other films and television newsmagazine segments have emphasized the more sensational aspects of the foreign bride issue, focusing primarily on the oppression of the young women, or the links between matchmaking and sex trafficking, Wu’s film takes a very different and quieter approach. “The Good Daughter” looks closely at one particular marriage between a Taiwanese husband and his Vietnamese wife, to explore how a traditional and fundamental human relationship is affected by a dramatic departure from traditional marital geography. It shows how the cultural distance and economic disparities that accompany a foreign marriage place ordinary domestic stresses under extraordinary pressure, bringing many marriages to and in many cases past the breaking point. Underscoring the universality of a story too often presented as an exotic curiosity, the film makes clear that the essential challenges faced any foreign bride and her husband – confronting the unfamiliar, negotiating differences, dealing with in-laws, balancing ambivalence for one’s spouse with unconditional love for one’s children, staying together – are common to couples everywhere.
In Taiwan, as in several other relatively prosperous Asian countries, including China, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore, relentless demographic and cultural pressures have shrunk the pool of marriageable local women in many rural areas and small towns, creating a social crisis that has deepened over the past several decades. At the same time, a significant number of families in relatively poor Asian nations such as Cambodia and Vietnam have faced endemic poverty, compelling many of them to look to the marriageability of their unwed daughters as a source of hard-to-find but desperately needed family income. The result has been a booming Asian regional matchmaking trade, in which men from richer countries import foreign brides to provide them with children and household labor, while women from poorer countries enter a relationship that holds out at least the hope of economic security and an opportunity to send money back home. But the reality of this pervasive Asian social experiment was far more complicated. Clearly, the message of the ubiquitous marketing brochures stapled on rural walls and telephone poles in Taiwan, luring lonely men with the explicit promise of “hard-working and obedient” brides from Vietnam, and the implicit but strongly-hinted promise of sex, was far from the whole story.
Other films and television newsmagazine segments have emphasized the more sensational aspects of the foreign bride issue, focusing primarily on the oppression of the young women, or the links between matchmaking and sex trafficking, Wu’s film takes a very different and quieter approach. “The Good Daughter” looks closely at one particular marriage between a Taiwanese husband and his Vietnamese wife, to explore how a traditional and fundamental human relationship is affected by a dramatic departure from traditional marital geography. It shows how the cultural distance and economic disparities that accompany a foreign marriage place ordinary domestic stresses under extraordinary pressure, bringing many marriages to and in many cases past the breaking point. Underscoring the universality of a story too often presented as an exotic curiosity, the film makes clear that the essential challenges faced any foreign bride and her husband – confronting the unfamiliar, negotiating differences, dealing with in-laws, balancing ambivalence for one’s spouse with unconditional love for one’s children, staying together – are common to couples everywhere.
The Good Daughter is supported by LEF Moving Image Fund, Salem Film Fest’s Doc-a-chusetts Pitch, and WGBH OUTPOST
