Make Me a Man is a 2015 film from Mongolia directed by E. Batkhuu.
Mendee and Olzy are a middle-aged couple in Ulaanbaatar. Their son Bataa was a dashing, handsome young man, his whole life ahead of him, until he suffered a devastating car accident. Now Bataa is confined to a wheelchair, unable to talk, with brain damage that rather resembles cerebral palsy.
Mendee is wheeling Bataa around the apartment building one day when her son, who is usually remote when he isn't suicidally depressed, fixes his attention on a gorgeous woman as she strolls past. Mendee, determined to help her son, tracks the woman to a nightclub. It turns out the woman, Naran, is a prostitute. Mendee approaches her with an unusual job offer: be Bataa's nurse and paid companion for a year.
Naran is taken aback, but the money's good, and she takes the job. However, it turns out that Mendee has rather more intimate ideas about the relationship between her son and Naran. There's another problem in the form of Zula, who grew up in an orphanage with Naran. Zula, who seems to have imagined that she and Mendee would be Heterosexual Life-Partners, is horribly jealous when she finds out that Naran may have found a home and family.
Tropes:
- Briefcase Full of Money: Zula returns with a whole duffel bag full of cash that she stole from her hoodlum client.
- Chekhov's Gun: Zula approaches Naran with a harebrained scheme to rob the safe of a john of hers. Naran rejects the idea. Later Zula returns, having successfully robbed the client. Apparently she gets away with it, although she's hurt that Naran won't come live with her.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Olzy has taken to drinking after his son's accident. At the beginning of the movie Bataa nearly succeeds in throwing himself from the balcony to his death, because Olzy is passed out drunk in the daytime in their apartment.
- Foreshadowing: Naran makes the mistake of inviting some of her friends over to Mendee and Olzy's apartment for a party. She gets mad when Zula starts grinding on Bataa's lap, telling her that Bataa is a sick man and they shouldn't make fun of him. Zula spitefully answers that at least one part of Bataa's anatomy is working just fine. Later, Bataa gets Naran pregnant.
- Glasses Pull: Olzy does this when he sees that Bataa, who was supposed to have been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, has gotten up and is walking unsteadily on his feet.
- Imagine Spot: Bataa, who may be mute and wheelchair-bound but is quite aware of his surroundings, imagines Naran doing a striptease for him on the bed.
- The Matchmaker: A pretty odd example, as Mendee is eventually revealed to have engaged Naran's services with the specific hope that she'll get busy with Bataa. When Naran asks Mendee to do her a favor and get her some underwear, Mendee makes a point of getting a lot of sexy stuff. It works.
- Mistaken for Gay: When Mendee approaches Naran at the nightclub, Naran mistakes Mendee for a lesbian looking for action. (Naran is a hooker after all.)
- Say My Name: It seems that Naran will be leaving, Mendee having cast her out of the house. Then Bataa speaks for the first time since the accident, shouting "NARAN!!" several times. Cue tearful happy ending.
- Stocking Filler: Part of the Fanservice when Naran starts putting on the sexy underwear that Mendee got her, which includes fishnet stockings.
- Suddenly Voiced: The Say My Name ending when Bataa shouts "NARAN!!" when Naran is leaving, after having not spoken for well over a year at least.
- Throwing Off the Disability: Neurologists said that Bataa would never walk again. But after some tender loving care (and sex) with Naran, he regains the ability to walk, and by the end he is talking again.
- Time-Passes Montage: A montage shows Naran and Bataa having joyful and happy times together as she gets big with pregnancy. Notably it does not show them getting married, which sets up the ending.
- Toplessness from the Back: Twice from Naran, once in an Imagine Spot when Bataa imagines her stripping, and once for real when she's trying on the fancy new bra that Mendee got her, something that gets Bataa excited enough to get out of his wheelchair.
