HSUEH SHIH-LING, RENE LIU IN UNEXPECTED COURAGESHAWN YU: UNEXPECTED COURAGE (2025) - New York Asian Film Festival 2025A difficult chldbirth (a true account)It's difficult to watch this true story of chldbirth from Taiwan without being touched. It's full of very specific and hearthbreeaking details. That does not keep some from objecting to it, for being what they think is a selfish male point of view. Be that as it may, as presented this is a tale full of love.
Le-Fu (René Liu, in her first film in 13 years) is a well known senior talent manager about to get another big promotion. She and Po-En (Hsueh Shih-ling), who directs commercials, have been together for five years and their bond is strong, but they have not married. She does not believe in marriage, at least not going into this experience: it changes that, because it is an ordeal that would either destroy the bond or deeply strengthen it, and it has the latter effect. But she is 45 and he is 32, and that's the other impediment in forming a perfect union, or so it has seemed. She isn't sure he wants to make the commitment; he doesn't think he's quite up to her standard.
This starts out seeming like a TV movie of a young man and his busy, ambitious female partner. It takes time to care anything about either person. All of a sudden when Le-Fu is under intense stress, and is celebrating her forty-fifth birthday, she collapses, bleeding. She wakes up in hospital in a windowless room where she will spend four months. In the room there is the magnified sound of a rapid heartbeat. She is four months pregnant, and didn't know it. This is the sound of the fetus she carries.
She has had premature rupture of membranes. She may miscarry. So the hosital proposes she have tocalysis, a procedure to delay or stop uterine contractions during preterm labor, using medications to prolong pregnancy so the fetus can develop normally. She must not get out of bed. She is located near an operating room, is under the care of a female obstetrician, and nurses are at the ready for any emergency. She balks at this, but Po-En is fully on board with it, enthusiastic about this new prospect of their having a child together which he did not dream of, and her natural lifelong grit takes over with this new abosrbing focus. Once the moment comes when she bonds with and starts to talk to the fetus, it's clear that she too is fully on board, and this becomes a life-and-death struggle.
Po-En attends her closely, sleeping there, while trying to maintain his own life, carryng out commercial shoots, particularly, pointedly, of a young teacher of little kids who with her young husband has been trying desperately to get pregnant through IVF, and now suddenly is so, with twins, a heartbreaking subplot. There is also a memorable visit from Le-Fu's parents, her somewhat estranged, largely silent father, whose intense private request to Po-En is a riveting moment. And Po-En attends a wedding, well into the ordeal, coverng it remotely on his phone for Le-Fu, which precipitates the final ordeal. Po-En normally has difficulty sleeping. He finds now that he can only sleep when literallly tied to Le-Fu at night, with the sound of the magnified fetus heartbeat.
The tragic outcome of another couple is heartbreaking in this inetnse context and puts us, the audience, on alert as to what may happen to Po-En and Le-Fu to the final tense moments. And they know from early in the tocalysis process that it is very possible in these cases that the child may be born prematurely and may be handicapped. There is lots of time to think about all this and for us to process it.
The film is saved from being a conventional medical tear-jerker by its specificity and authenticity. Events are heightened, stylized, perhaps glamorized as is common in such cases, but it all works. This is a beautfiful, touching film, with new things to say about the choice to have children, the complexities of life in a committed couple, and yes, the unexpecterd courage that people can discover in themselves during a prolongued medical emergency or "this long disease," our lives. The two principal actors deliver throughout and are ably supported by all the cast.
Unexpected Courage. 我們意外的勇氣 (Wǒmen yìwài de yǒngqì, "Our Unexpected Courage"), in Mandarin, 111 mins., was screened for this review as part of the July 11-17, 2025 New York Asian Film Festival.
SHOWTIMES:
Thursday July 17, 6:00pm
Film at Lincoln Center
Intro and Q&A with director Shawn Yu
Friday July 18, 8:30pm
LOOK Cinemas W57
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