Director: Shosh Shlam, Hilla Medalia
Writers: Shosh Shlam, Hilla Medalia
Shosh Shlam - an Israeli director born and raised in one of those ultra-orthodox Jewish communities that make wives churn out a multitude of children – was very curious to investigate and report how actually motherhood works in a country that instead fully recommends (or maybe we should say forces) women to have only one child and, before of this, put an enormous amount of stress on them about arranging somehow a young marriage with…Well, someone good to finally find a place in the world.
Sheng nu is a derogatory term popularized by the Chinese government to describe “leftover women”, all those poor unfortunate ones in their late 20s and 30s who have not been lucky/smart/clever/fast enough to place themselves in a family context as wives and mothers.
The documentary follows 3 Beijing women who are struggling to get a husband, and make everyone around them happy, without selling their lives and souls.
Hua Mei, is a successful lawyer who visits a dating agency to find her perfect match. After talking a bit with the agent, the only feedback that she receives is that her age and her looks make her a non viable option for the marriage market.
“You are nothing so special, people at your level won’t be interested in you. So, you know, better don’t be pretentious; your time is running out.”
For Gai Qi is more complicated: her family was quite wealthy, but her father died too soon and left the family in a bad economic situation that interferes with the chance of arranging a good marriage. Nobody wants a poor girl, even if she is an independent hard worker. So, the only solution is a disenchanted pragmatism because, after all: “You need to compromise for your marriage”.
Xu Min has a degree in Communication, she is the host of a successful Pekingese radio show, and she is a restless regular visitor of speed/blind dates (they honestly look more like terrifying human markets); special events attended not only by young people, but also by all those parents who search around – like hounds – in order to find suitable matches for their beloved children.
Clearly not fantastic scenarios to find soulmates around and enjoy your life.
Marriages are something that Chinese society and government want to desperately regulate and control. Looking back, the one-child policy introduced in China in 1979 as a birth planning program wasn’t a brilliant idea in the long term. At that time having a male child was considered more valuable, so now there are 30 million “extra” men around, many of whom will never find a partner. This is very threatening to national stability in an already complicated cultural mechanism that looks at the marriage not as a celebration of love, but more as a socio-economic agreement (or deal) between 2 families. Chinese marriage is not a real choice, in fact, it is way more a matter of fact of being chosen by someone who looked at you like a commodity.
Men are expected to bring money and always be dominant. On the other hand, women are expected to be young and manageable and in order to marry “up” and be finally happy and fulfilled with children. There is no happiness in being alone, and that’s why leftover women, even being very successful and highly educated, are seen as rebels: they don’t follow the social order, and they are considered as something to fight, to control, to diminish, to feel uncomfortable about.
The beauty of this documentary is made by 2 things: faces and words.
More than a very accurate journalism report, the documentary is more a story about humans still not being able to be independent, and Shlam chooses to talk about this with a more intimate and honest look, wisely using close-ups of the people in it. The video camera gently lingers on the faces in the real moment of disillusionment, envy, memory, anger, shame; when these women realise that it’s impossible to be different from what they are, and they still have to choose between fight, and manage all the consequences, or surrender and keep their dignity up.
The determined choice to show the rawness in usual conversations is really emotionally exhausting to process, but at least it helps to understand how difficult must be living in a perpetual judgemental condition, where everything about yourself have to be always on the table and nothing can be hidden anywhere safe. This is the real power of the movie: show the dichotomy between what you are and what the world wants from you.
These 2 things remain always very distinct, there is no fusion or synthesis between them, and the solutions are usually only 2: keep yourself nice and tame in order to learn to act well, or grab your balls and run away from the circle that they drew around you.
Leftover Women comes recommended if you are in your 30s, and people make you feel uncomfortable about your choices, if your ovaries weirdly start to ticking, if you are the only one of your friends not been married yet, if your mom asks you when she’s going to have grandchildren, and you feel lost and too scared to find the right words to just say: “Now, I just really don’t know”.
The best: Masochistically, I will say that all the dialogues are so true, so painful, so straight, so unfairly real to give us a great spotlight of women’s private struggle.
The worst: Would have liked to see a deeper social and political analysis of Chinese government policies about family and parenthood, but I assume that this point is missed on purpose.
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