Reviews
Hollywood Reporter
Daughter From Danang
Jan. 24, 2002

By Duane Byrge

PARK CITY -- It's a mother and daughter reunion with all the emotions that can fly after a 22-year separation. The story of one Vietnamese-American woman's visit to the Vietnamese mother who gave her up following the Vietnam War so that she might have a better life in the United States, "Daughter From Danang" is a sobering and powerful documentary about the most severe kind of personal loss: rejection by one's mother. Bracingly told, this entrant in the documentary competition here at the Sundance Film Festival is a stirring and moving depiction of one young Amerasian woman's family ordeal.

This is Heidi's story, the real-life saga of a young Tennessee-raised woman who was shipped to the United States as a child and put up for adoption. She was raised as a typical American girl, Southern-fried a bit and every bit the girl next door. Since she didn't perceptively look much different from the regular Tennessee kids, Heidi was never looked upon as a foreigner and went through all the typical kid's rites of passages in red-white-blue style. It was, indeed, out of the blue that Heidi as a young adult received a letter from a woman in Vietnam who was obviously her mother, a woman she had no contact with in 22 years.

Filmmakers Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco document Heidi's uncertain return to her birth mother and, in so doing, open up more than just the story of a joyful visit; they show us the long-festering wounds that Heidi has received in her life. Heidi acutely feels that she has been rejected by two mothers: her birth mother who gave her up and her Tennessee mother, whose cold, untouching demeanor drove a wedge between them. While focused on the journey to Vietnam, the filmmakers smartly trace the history of Heidi's circumstances and paint an atmospheric and psychological picture of her growing up. It's an even-handed portrait of an uncertain life, the story of a girl who never felt she belonged anywhere.

"Daughter From Danang's" power lies with its simple and eloquent presentation, never swaying to make editorial points nor intruding with suppositions of what Heidi may be or what life course may be best. It's a complex portrait, etched with intelligence and framed with respect. Dolgin and Franco have most respectfully crafted a story filled with humanity. Told with a humility that bespeaks Heidi's own respectful nature, it's terrifically powerful. With their judicious and comprehensive charting of the course of Heidi's life, the filmmakers make us feel for this young woman who, essentially, is not only torn between two mothers and two homelands but, in the end, realizes that she is alone and must make her own home.

In this softly stated depiction, the technical contributions are succinctly excellent, including cinematographer Franco's illuminating compositions, as well as B. Quincy Griffin and Hector Perez's flavored music, conveying the multi-tonal personal chords in Heidi's own life.




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LA Weekly
Ernest Hardy

Daughter From Danang opens with wrenching footage of weeping, biracial Vietnamese children (reportedly orphans, though many were not) who were airlifted to the United States in 1975 as the war was ending. The action was part of a campaign to give the stranded offspring of American G.I.s a better life — and to snag some last-minute sympathy for the war. Heidi Bub (a.k.a. Mai Thi Hiep) was one of those children. Adopted by an American single mom and raised in Tennessee, Heidi returned to Vietnam 22 years after leaving to reunite with her birth mother, Mai Thi Kim, and her Vietnamese half-siblings. Directors Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco build slowly toward the actual reunion, sketching in the lives of all involved since the separation. Heidi’s emotionally disturbed adoptive mom, Mai Thi Kim’s hardships as she mourned her daughter, and Heidi’s current life as a wife and mother are all captured in tautly edited interviews and revealing sojourns through both Tennessee and a poverty-stricken Vietnam. The directors carefully excavate details of the women’s lives, creating an atmosphere of expectation and bundled-up emotions that is neither overly sentimental nor intrusive. But almost from the moment Heidi returns to her homeland, things go awry. The aggressive, almost overpowering kisses that Kim lavishes on Heidi are contrasted subtly with Heidi’s slow recoil from them. Heidi’s anguished voice-over puts the viewer inside her head at such awkward moments, which mount with horrifying speed as her blood relatives’ expectations crush in on her. Culture clash manifests itself in the grasping emotional and financial neediness of the Vietnamese clan, which chafes against the emotional reserve (and scars) that lie beneath Heidi’s Southern bubbliness. As fantasies of happily-ever-after dissipate — a reality hauntingly embodied by the image of Mai Thi Kim sitting at a dinner table, so forlorn she’s unable to eat — the film’s almost unbearable portrait of sadness and grief transcends its specific story to speak to the ways in which need, history and presumption tangle, and sometimes destroy, blood ties.

(Now showing in San Francisco and San Jose - Nov 29, 2002)

Source: www.daughterfromdanang.com/
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