Drawing from his own experiences as a gay man, Taiwanese-American filmmaker Barney Cheng (鄭伯昱) writes, directs and stars in Baby Steps (滿月酒), a comedy-drama about a gay couple searching for a surrogate to have their baby. While the movie offers a much-needed cross-cultural examination of issues surrounding the gay family, Cheng’s filmmaking effort is merely passable.
One of the few things he does right is casting veteran actress Gua Ah-leh (歸亞蕾) as Mrs Lee, a mother struggling to come to terms with her son’s sexuality and his non-traditional family. Cheng himself plays Danny, a Taiwanese-American who longs to start a family with his partner Tate (Michael Adam Hamilton) in West Hollywood, Los Angeles.
The couple’s journey is anything but easy. Danny tries out different agencies in a vain attempt to find an appropriate surrogate, and adding to the stress is Mrs Lee, who, after learning about her son’s plan, flies to Los Angeles from her home in Taipei to make sure that everything goes well so that she can have the perfect grandchild she always wanted.
Photo Courtesy of Hualien Media
Conflicts between mother and son inevitably erupt, as Mrs Lee refuses to accept her son for who he is, and always seems uneasy when Danny and Tate are together. Years after Danny came out, Mrs Lee still remains silent about her son’s sexuality in front of friends and relatives.
The journey to find a surrogate takes the trio to Mumbai, Bangkok and Taipei. Frustrated, Danny eventually turns to Mrs Lee’s Indonesian housekeeper Mickey — played by Love Fang (莫愛芳) — to be their surrogate. Knowing that the payment would help with providing a better life for her children back home, Mickey agrees.
After the baby is born, Mrs Lee has to decide whether or not to truly embrace her son and his family.
Photo Courtesy of Hualien Media
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
Baby Steps is supported by strong talents on the production side. Besides the UK’s Stephen Israel, who is best known for the comedy-drama Swimming with Sharks, Taiwan’s Hsu Li-kong (徐立功) is also on board. Hsu is known for producing Ang Lee’s (李安) trilogy films, including The Wedding Banquet (囍宴, 1993) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍, 2000).
Cheng’s film brings to mind The Wedding Banquet, specially since Gua also plays the mother role in the drama about a gay Taiwanese-American man who marries a woman to please his parents.
More than 20 years later, the issues tackled by filmmakers are no longer that of coming out or sexual identity — and Baby Steps aptly reflects this progress through focusing on non-traditional families. Yet, unlike Lee’s heartfelt analysis, Cheng’s dealing with patriarchal structures remain shallow, only feebly delivered by Mrs Lee’s eagerness to have an heir to carry on the family lineage.
What stays the same is Gua’s composed performance, and her ability to make an un-likable character lovable.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and the New Taipei City Government in May last year agreed to allow the activation of a spent fuel storage facility for the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門). The deal ended eleven years of legal wrangling. According to the Taipower announcement, the city government engaged in repeated delays, failing to approve water and soil conservation plans. Taipower said at the time that plans for another dry storage facility for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) remained stuck in legal limbo. Later that year an agreement was reached
What does the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) era stand for? What sets it apart from their allies, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)? With some shifts in tone and emphasis, the KMT’s stances have not changed significantly since the late 2000s and the era of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) current platform formed in the mid-2010s under the guidance of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and current President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity. Though their ideological stances may be a bit stale, they have the advantage of being broadly understood by the voters.
In a high-rise office building in Taipei’s government district, the primary agency for maintaining links to Thailand’s 108 Yunnan villages — which are home to a population of around 200,000 descendants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies stranded in Thailand following the Chinese Civil War — is the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC). Established in China in 1926, the OCAC was born of a mandate to support Chinese education, culture and economic development in far flung Chinese diaspora communities, which, especially in southeast Asia, had underwritten the military insurgencies against the Qing Dynasty that led to the founding of
Artifacts found at archeological sites in France and Spain along the Bay of Biscay shoreline show that humans have been crafting tools from whale bones since more than 20,000 years ago, illustrating anew the resourcefulness of prehistoric people. The tools, primarily hunting implements such as projectile points, were fashioned from the bones of at least five species of large whales, the researchers said. Bones from sperm whales were the most abundant, followed by fin whales, gray whales, right or bowhead whales — two species indistinguishable with the analytical method used in the study — and blue whales. With seafaring capabilities by humans
RSS