Daughter from Danang is a rarity among personal documentaries: It is candid but not self-conscious, emotionally unsparing but polished and unobtrusive in its production. The camera follows Heidi Bub, a military wife and mother of two from Pulaski, Tenn., on an unlikely journey — to Danang, Vietnam, where she’ll meet the birth mother and half-siblings she left behind during “Operation Babylift,” the Ford administration’s campaign to transplant Amerasian children to adoptive families in the United States. In the 22 years following her adoption, Heidi had become thoroughly American; high school snapshots depict her with a permed mullet and Keds, taught by her stern (and eventually estranged) adoptive mother to deny her mixed-race heritage in order to “pass.” Meanwhile, Mai Thi Kim had pined for two decades for the daughter she lost. At first look, this mother-and-child reunion has all the makings of a tearjerking intercultural lovefest, but the reality is infinitely more complex. Curling her bangs with a Clicker and goggling naively at her birth family’s primitive shower, Heidi is the typical American fish out of water, but the filmmakers take seriously her unmet need to be mothered, to belong and be loved unconditionally. Likewise, Kim is infinitely sympathetic and her grief painfully real, but the film makes clear that her outpouring of emotion is overwhelming to Heidi. To call the situation a “culture clash” would be an oversimplification, but the film takes its most interesting turn when East and West collide in a discussion about filial duty. Some audiences may prefer the film’s first half, when Dolgin and Franco build up a serious head of political steam with absolutely tragic stock footage of children being loaded onto military transport planes and ostensibly well-meaning American social workers encouraging Vietnamese mothers to give up their sobbing sons and daughters. (“It’s better for them,” one volunteer cajoles.) But as the film follows its natural trajectory away from macropolitics and into the realm of the personal, it becomes a richer and more detailed document of the consequences of war. Dolgin and Franco’s cameras are largely invisible. Aside from the occasional beauty shot of dragonflies lighting on reeds, the filmmakers don’t romanticize the Vietnamese landscape or engage in visual trickery. But they do have full access to every awkward moment of Heidi’s trip, and they don’t abuse the trust of their subjects. Honest and unflinching, Daughter From Danang isn’t always pleasant to watch, but it is powerful and memorable.
This article appears in January 10 • 2003.