‘Bird of Paradise’: A Mother’s Self-Discovery Through Pole Dancing

Writer-director Joey Wu Chui-yi has gone from aspiring screenwriter to feature filmmaker almost overnight. The Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) graduate and First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI) awardee had never seriously considered directing while at university, seeing herself primarily as a writer. But when one of her instructors, filmmaker Norman Chan Hok-yan, showed an early draft of Bird of Paradise (媽樣年華) to HKBU associate professor and producer Saville Chan Sum-yiu, she found herself in the director’s chair after all.

“I read the script and found it full of potential. So as a team we decided to submit it to the FFFI programme [in 2021],” says Chan (A Light Never Goes Out, The Way We Dance). “The script is very much about her mother, but because my own mother had recently passed away, I found its passion spoke to me. We worked with her to make the film more eye-catching to the programme, because FFFI is basically a script competition.”

A week or so before the film’s release, Wu perches on the edge of her seat in a secluded lounge at K11 Art House, confessing that she finds it awkward to talk about herself so much all of a sudden. She is getting used to it: publicity comes with the territory for a film as personal as Bird of Paradise. She has also been travelling to festivals in New York, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur, talking about herself — and filmmaking — along the way.

“I never had any chances to make a film or anything while I was studying; it was during Covid. Most of my lessons were on Zoom. So I focused on writing,” she says. Unlike many film students, she had never made a short film or video before enrolling at HKBU. She enjoyed cinema but had not expected to direct a feature in her mid-20s. “This really is my first time making a movie. I was lucky [star Catherine Chau] was very kind and very generous. My whole crew was, and I learnt a lot from them,” she says. Her crew included Chan, cinematographer Chan Hok-lun (Sasha Chuk’s Fly Me to the Moon), editor Alan Cheng Wai-lun (Jack Ng’s Night King) and art director Law Chung-yin (Love Lies).

Motherhood and modernity

Bird of Paradise is an unassuming dramedy. Its visual language occasionally betrays Wu’s inexperience as a director, but its dialogue challenges some of Hong Kong’s assumptions about motherhood and modernity. 

“The idea came from a very brief conversation I had with my mother,” says Wu. “One day I asked her, ‘What’s the meaning of your life?’ And she just said, ‘Oh, actually, there is no meaning. If you guys are home for dinner, that’s my meaning.’ That made me feel a little bit sad, because I know I was very lucky that she loved me but I wanted her to love herself. I wanted her to have her own road. At the time I was still in university and I was doing my script homework so my screenplay became about a mom who has to find her own story.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, early response from mothers has been strong.

Wu cites Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot as an inspiration, while Masayuki Suo’s Shall We Dance? shares Bird of Paradise’s theme of self-discovery through dance. At its heart, though, Wu’s film follows three generations of women claiming agency and defining beauty on their own terms — even if Wu does not see it as a feminist statement. 

“I think everyone should spin around themselves, not just women,” she says. Producer Chan agrees, chiming in: “Actually there’s a school of thought that says feminism isn’t only related to women but also to men. It emancipates both. It was very common for women to have dance parties for themselves back in the 1960s; my mother did it. Right now a woman is so busy with work and family she can lose herself. I liked the script’s self-discovery of freedom.”

Bird of Paradise introduces housewife Mei-yuen (Catherine Chau Ka-yee) as she starts another grindingly ordinary day. She prepares breakfast for her schoolteacher husband, Ming-lam (Peter Chan Charm-man), and their son, Hang (Jayden Cheung Dik-man), following the strict menu and timetable set by Ming-lam. Mei-yuen spends her day keeping house, shopping for dinner and warning her widowed mother, Fung-mei (Elaine Jin Yan-ling), against getting too involved with a much younger man who, she hopes, will help her complete a bucket list she shared with her late husband.

A chance encounter with a flyer leads Mei-yuen to Spinderella Pole Studio in Lai Chi Kok, where she discovers she has signed up for pole dancing lessons. Complicating matters, Hang’s girlfriend Shan (Yeung Nga-man, the singer ThaiMay) is in the same class. Fearing Ming-lam’s reaction, Mei-yuen nevertheless stays on, adopts the name Amy and strikes up an unlikely friendship with Shan, regaining confidence and self-respect.

Self-discovery in pole dancing

Wu sees dance as an outlet for emotion and chose pole dancing as Amy’s path to self-discovery for several reasons: its fading association with seediness and taboo, its athleticism and artistry and its emphasis on the individual. The image of the caged bird was a bonus. “I liked the visual of spinning, because when you hold onto the pole, you’re the centre of the world,” Wu explains. 

Pole dancing — Bird of Paradise is also the name of a recognised move — gives Wu a visual counterpoint to Hong Kong society’s expectations of how a proper wife and mother should behave. It also provides an opening to explore how men can reinforce those expectations. Wu acknowledges that attitudes are changing, and that she exaggerated Ming-lam’s character to make a point, but believes acceptance still has its limits.

“When it comes to their partner, the tolerance immediately shrinks,” Wu says. “If you ask the average man if a random girl or woman doing pole dancing is acceptable, most will say ‘Oh, it’s okay.’ But if it’s their mother doing the pole dancing, or daughter, or partner, they’ll say ‘No.’ Deep down, traditional thinking still affects us all.”

Although Fung-mei’s experiences differ from Wu’s own, each of the film’s three central women reflects something of her, especially Shan, an amalgam of women of Wu’s generation. Shan is the most outspoken, pushing back against social expectations. When Ming-lam chastises her for showing off her pole-dancing moves at school, she challenges his rigid beliefs. “I think that was me when I was younger. I thought the world revolved around me and I could do whatever I wanted. Most young people have these thoughts, right? But as we grow older, we learn that’s not the case; we have to spin around the world, but somehow find a way to be our own centre.”

Wu wants to challenge the notions of gender roles, propriety, creativity and individuality that she says remain common in parts of Asia, including expectations placed on mothers like Mei-yuen and grandmothers like Fung-mei. “Most mothers are trained to sacrifice a lot for their children, and they put their kids at the centre of their world. They over-magnify their role as a mother and then feel guilty if they spend time on their own. That’s still very common in Asia. Women have to work nowadays, but the concept of sacrificing for their kids hasn’t changed,” Wu argues. “I don’t really want children and I think most girls in Hong Kong would rather have a cat or a dog. I’ve seen how my mother’s life shook out, and I really appreciate her, but I see her life and think it’s too demanding for me. I want to have my own life and my own world.”

Finding the face of this quiet rebellion took time, but Wu and Chan eventually settled on Chau, who trained with Spinderella founder Winnie Felicia, who also appears in the film. Wu valued Chau’s approachable, everyday presence; despite her star status, she seems like someone you might encounter in a supermarket. Wu had one reservation. “I thought she looked a bit too young — and she doesn’t actually have any children [in] real life,” she adds with a chuckle. “In fact no one on the entire set did, except for Elaine. But everyone has a mother, and that turned out to be enough.”

What does Wu hope audiences will take from Bird of Paradise? “Take action. Don’t wait to live,” she says, adding that she tried pole dancing herself: “I actually learnt pole dancing because of the film; I wanted to know more about it. I’m a terrible dancer and I’m very shy, so it was very difficult — way more difficult than writing a script. But me and Catherine and ThaiMay were the fittest we’d ever been during the shoot.” She grins. “I hope enrolment in pole dance lessons goes up.”

Bird of Paradise is now in cinemas.