Damon Nguyon as Birh and Tron Dong Ouoo Thrn as Tim SK Pictures

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Today, 05 July 2008

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The dalliances between American GIs and their Vietnamese mistresses and wives have been well covered in Hollywood films. The children of these partnerships, though, have tended to be overlooked.

Binh (Damien Nguyen) lives with his aunt and her family in a small Vietnamese village. He has "the face of the enemy" and is treated as a servant and an outcast by all who know him.

Eventually, he decides to join his mother in Ho Chi Minh City, where she works as a maid for a wealthy family. Life is hardly better here, and she convinces him to go to America with his half-brother, Tam, to find his American father (Nick Nolte).

The journey is long and arduous, and at a refugee camp in Malaysia, Binh meets Ling (Bai Ling), a Chinese dancer who supports herself through prostitution. They eventually arrive in New York, smuggled by human traffickers, to a new kind of slavery.

Directed by Hans Petter Moland, this is a quiet film, told in both Vietnamese and English, largely free of sentimentality, offering a different vision of an often-romanticised country. It's a slow-moving film which isn't afraid to dwell on its characters.

Couldn't help wondering how Binh found his parents so easily, though.

Nevertheless, it's definitely worth the trip, with Nguyen perfectly cast as the shy, gentle man who has been told he's ugly all his life, determined to find his roots.

Nolte may be the big name actor in this quietly determined tale of survival, but it's Nguyen who really shines.