My imported wife

In 2003, one out of every four marriages in Taiwan involved a foreign bride, surely one of the highest ratios of cross-national marriages in the world. This film faithfully presents the marriage and married life of a foreign bride in Taiwan, using a fly-on-the-wall approach to reflect the rapid structural changes to population and culture corresponding with this sector of global population movement. The groom, Huang Nai-hui, although highly intelligent, is afflicted with cerebral palsy, and as a result of his ungainly appearance has been unable to find a wife in Taiwan. Working through a marriage agency he found a Cambodian wife, Navy, with whom he had a daughter. Despite only a basic education, Navy is very much her own person and is not shy about speaking her mind. The couple’s differences of experience and background often create friction and result in spats, reflecting the “transaction” aspect of cross-national marriages. Huang’s conduct exhibits a certain degree of male chauvinism, yet at the same time he is the initiator of a foreign brides’ rights promotion association. The couple’s life together is real-life drama, only no scriptwriter could come up with such astonishing and saddening plot twists.