DAUGHTER FROM DANANG
# stars based on 4 stars: 3 Reviewed by: Harvey Karten Interfaze Educational Productions Directed by: Gail Dolgin, Vicente Franco Cast: Heidi Bub, Mai Thi Kim Tran Tuong Nhu, John Bub, Brenda Lewis, Do Trong Tinh, Do Thi Thu Hien, Do Thi Hong Lien, Do Huu Vinh, Tom Miller, Jessica Bub, Kaitlin Bub, Royce Hughes Screened at: Preview 9, NYC, 10/22/02
It's not nice for a mom to abandon her child. Look at how such an action traumatized Samara, the little girl in Gore Verbinski's horror movie "The Ring." Thrown into a well whose top is covered by her mother, she seeks video vengeance. "Let's go to the videotape" is not what you want to hear if you're in possession of a black cartridge bearing no source on its label.
No one is thrown down a well in Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco's stirring documentary, "Daughter from Danang," but the title character is abandoned not once but twice by her moms, and has been traumatized as though she were indeed tossed into a well. Heidi Bub, born Mai Thi Hiep in Danang, Vietnam in 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War, does not want to leave her mother. Her mother does not want to abandon her. But persuaded that once the Viet Cong win they will douse mixed-race children with gasoline and burn them alive, her mother, Mai Thi Kim tearfully deposits her half-American, half-Vietnamese little girl with a social services agency. She is taken to Tennessee and raised by a single mother who never should have been in the adoption business. This adoptive mother went ballistic as soon as Heidi began dating, locked her out of the house when the teen missed her 11 a.m. curfew, and ultimately washed her hands of the poor young woman, who could pass for all-American with her rotund features and southern-fried accent.
When Heidi searched the 'net, presumably looking for some film reviews, she realized that the computer could be her way back to her birth mother after a 22-year separation. Traveling to Danang with a translator, Tran Tuong Nhu, an excited 32-year-old hopped an Air Vietnam where she is filmed every step of the way from airline seat to the shabby but livable quarter of Mai Thi Kim. She is treated like a queen by her mom who shows off her now-married daughter to the whole town.
So what do we have here yet another travelogue? Happily no. So many histrionics are provided by Heidi that at the screening I attended loud discussions were in progress about the traveling woman. I was in the camp that found her naive, ignorant, and obnoxious al the things that make for first-class soap opera and provide a mirror into Heidi's character.
Heidi had been taken by her adoptive mother to places like Hawaii, which made the latter into an "after all I've done for you this is the way you treat me" kind of woman. But she had apparently never been to an undeveloped country. Living now in a decent home with her career-Navy husband, John Bub and a couple of kids, she was not prepared for the abject poverty of the Southeast Asian land. Never mind that she was not a tourist but someone excited about visiting her mother. This spoiled piece of work exclaimed in front of the camera which was recording everything that she couldn't wait to get back home. And this after four days of being treated like royalty! The tension reaches a boiling point when on her last day of this seven-day sojourn, members of her birth mother's family ask her to help support her poverty-stricken mom. No specific sum is requested. For all we know Heidi can do well shelling out a thousand bucks a year. Instead of saying with the brio of someone who falsely exclaims, "Let's do lunch" that "Fine, mom, I'll go back home and see what I can do," Heidi breaks down into tears right in front of the camera. She refuses to offer a cent. Talk about a lack of diplomacy!
As I stated, this is what makes for drama. Given the sincerity of the daughter from Danang, which is to say her stupidity and cupidity and downright selfishness, Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco's doc is a trip...a round one at that.
Not Rated. 81 minutes. Copyright 2002 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 33189 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 802175 X-RT-TitleID: 1113736 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: 3/4
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews